By Sabrina Bresciani
The Benefits of Synchronous
Collaborative Information Visualization
Evidence from an Experimental Evaluation
Sabrina Bresciani & Martin J. Eppler
University of Lugano, Switzerland
sabrina.bresciani@usi.ch
University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
epplerm@gmail.com
Website: www.knowledge-communication.org
Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsHlO8UXaLw
Context
Research question
In group facilitation, a suitable interactive visual support,
compared to a textual support, leads to greater:
H1. Productivity
H2. Outcome quality
H3. Learning
H4. Satisfaction
H5. Participation
Methodology
Results
Implications
Future
?
Does interactive visualization support knowledge sharing in organizations better than text based methods?
Hypothesis
Q A
Experiment
Subjects: 131 managers (MBA classes)
Groups of 5 = 26 groups
Topic:Discuss strategy implementation problems
As assigned by a previous study
with 116 different managers
3 conditions: control + 2 visuals
Control:
flipchart
Treatment 2:
Suboptimal*
visual template
(timeline)
Treatment 1:
Optimal*
visual template
(visual metaphor)
Limitations
>>
> Organization
> Group meetings
> Knowledge sharing
> Conceptual visualization
for all objective measures:
- number of shared information
- quality
- learning (recall)
for all subjective measures:
- satisfaction
- participation
Visualization > obectively better results
but subjects seem not to perceive it
Reappropriation
No significant difference between visualizations
Vis: better, never worse!
Findings
Only one person with
mouse and keyboard
Collaborative annotations / "secondary notation"
Culture: Europe
Only interactive vis
Knowledge sharing
Green and Petre 1996
>
>
>
>
Touchscreens
Multi-mice
Paper condition
Other tasks
Conduct abroad
presenting, planning, ranking, idea generation
Singapore,... ?
Number of documented items
Range of documented items
Number of relevant items
Structure (categories)
Equal redundancies [control]
Recall
Knowledge gain (new items, not previously known)
Satisfaction with process
Satisfaction with outcome
Freedom of participation
Equality of participation
Tentative hypotesis: the two visualizations (optimal and
suboptimal) provide similar performances
Group
Objective
Individual
Individual
Individual
Subjective
Subjective
Objective
Objective
Group
Adaptive Stucturation Theory (AST)
Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsHlO8UXaLw
YES
EQUAL
(ongoing research)
diagrams, knowldege maps, visual metaphors
Software: let's focus www.lets-focus.com
Panel: Changing the world with visualization
> make an impact in the real world
Presented at InfoVis 09, Atlantic City, NJ, 11-16 October 2009.Sabrina Bresciani and Martin J. Eppler