Computer Supported Collaborative Visualization

Given the large amounts of data generated by almost every conceivable activity under the umbrella of scientific computing, it is fairly obvious that visualization is of great importance in attaching meaning to computational results. As the complexity of problems studied in a simulation setting have grown, the number of people involved in each project has mushroomed. In many cases, associated researchers are geographically dispersed, making face-to-face collaboration and analysis a tricky proposition. Thus, the need is arising for very sophisticated visualization techniques that allow scientists to work "on the same page".

Visualization activities are generally placed across a time-place model, as often used in the Computer Supported Co-operative Working (CSCW) community. Along one axis is temporal, designating activities as occurring at either the Same Time or a Different Time; and the other axis is spatial, with events occurring either in the Same Place or a Different Place. It's not too difficult to come up with examples that would fit each of the four resulting quadrants. Same-place-same-time activities could include departmental meetings, one-on-one interactions, or training seminars. Same-place-different-time activities could consist of things like work shifts, classroom schedules, and the likes. Different-place-same-time events might mean phone calls, chat rooms, or video conferencing. Finally, different-place- different-time activities include things like e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, and even surfing the net.

Currently, most collaborative visualization efforts fall into the same-place-same-time quadrant of the CSCW model. In this scenario, multiple researchers generally gather around a workstation to work on turning data into some enlightening visual display. This works OK some of the time for some projects, but it is clearly not the optimal situation.

Many so-called "pipeline" applications have been developed recently to allow researchers to customize their visualization techniques. Packages such as AVS and IRIS Explorer allow scientists to patch together various modules to generate visual entities from raw data. Using this approach, work can be delegated, as each researcher can develop a piece of the total system that will be used in a visualization process. Inevitably, though, the different parts of the puzzle, and thus their creators, have to come together in one place. This generally leads back to the scenario of two or more scientists huddled around one workstation.

To try and overcome this spatial dependence, a research group at the University of Leeds, UK, has developed the CSCV, or Computer Supported Collaborative Visualization. Next week, we'll see how these scientists have extended IRIS Explorer to a collaborative tool.

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