Collaboration in scientific visualization

Mechanisms and tools able to facilitate collaboration are needed when remotely team members wish to jointly analyze data to create and acquire new knowledge. This paper discusses the main challenges involved in remote collaboration systems used in scientific visualization, and presents our solutions and assessments. To evaluate the usability and effectiveness of the collaborative tools comprising this system, we conduct an experiment on several groups of users. More particularly, we compare various forms of audio and textual communication tools as well as graphical indicators used to exchange information. Our analyses reveal how important it is to choose the means of conversation and, surprisingly, that graphical indicators have little influence. Furthermore, these experiments demonstrate that the system’s usability can be significantly improved through providing appropriate grounding and awareness support. This results in increased satisfaction, and in turn a potential increase the quality of collaborative work.