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asynchronous collaboration resulted in higher-quality outcomes - broader dis-
cussions, more complete reports, and longer solutions - than face-to-face collab-
oration [6].
Web-based collaboration around visualizations introduces new challenges for
research, as most work on collaborative visualization has been done in the context
of synchronous scenarios: users interacting at the same time to analyze scientific
results or discuss the state of a battlefield. As described in the previous section,
co-located collaboration usually involves shared displays, including large wall-
sized screens and table-top devices (e. g., [28,31]). Systems supporting remote
collaboration have primarily focused on synchronous interaction [3,14]), such
as shared virtual workspaces (e. g., [1,24]) and augmented reality systems that
enable multiple users to interact concurrently with visualized data (e. g., [25,9]).
In addition, the increasing availability of table-top and large public displays has
prompted researchers to experiment with asynchronous, co-located visualization
(same place, different time), often in the form of ambient information displays
(e. g., [21]).
In this section, we instead focus on the kind of collaboration that is most
common over the Web: remote collaboration across time and space. Our goal
is to summarize the work done to date and indicate promising research direc-
tions. We first review recent web-based systems supporting social data analysis
around visualizations, highlighting the collaborative features provided by these
systems and how they have been used in practice. We then discuss a number of
outstanding challenges for asynchronous collaborative visualization and identify
avenues for future research.
4.1 Web-Based Collaborative Visualization Systems
Though web-based collaboration around visualizations is still in its infancy, a
handful of commercial and research systems in this area have recently been
introduced. Here we discuss contemporary visualization systems that support
asynchronous collaborative analysis (shown in Fig. 2), documenting the collab-
orative features supported by these tools and initial reports of their usage.
DecisionSite Posters: Adding Collaboration to a Single-User Tool:
De-
cisionSite Posters is a feature of the Spotfire product sold by TIBCO, Inc.
Users of Spotfire's desktop-based visualization system can capture snapshots
of their analyses and publish them on an intranet as “posters.” View sharing
is supported, as each poster has a unique URL than can be easily distributed.
Each poster also sup-ports unthreaded text comments on a side panel. However,
posters do not allow annotations, limiting the ability of collaborators to point
at specific trends or outliers.
As described in [96], the communication capabilities in DecisionSite Posters
have been used in an unexpected way. Instead of engaging in complex conversa-
tions by using the comment panel, as envisioned by the system's designers, users
have largely used the tool for presenting their findings to colleagues. The ability
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