Collaborative Visual Analytics: Inferring from the Spatial Organization and Collaborative Use of Information

We introduce a visual analytics environment for the support of remote-collaborative sense-making activities. Team members use their individual graphical interfaces to collect, organize and comprehend task-relevant information relative to their areas of expertise. A system of computational agents infers possible relationships among information items through the analysis of the spatial and temporal organization and collaborative use of information. The computational agents support the exchange of information among team members to converge their individual contributions. Our system allows users to navigate vast amounts of shared information effectively and remotely dispersed team members to work independently without diverting from common objectives as well as to minimize the necessary amount of verbal communication