1. Online Collaborative Visualization
CSC4730/6730
Scientific Visualization
Online Collaborative Visualization
Lecture 19
Ying Zhu
Georgia State University

2. The concept Upload data sets to a web site
Create visualizations online
Share with others

3. Motivations Scale to larger audience Part of the Web 2.0 trend
Online sharing and collaboration
Enable end-user creation of visualization
Foster large scale collaborative usage
Part of the cloud computing trend
No need to install any software
No need to maintain local copy
Accessible from anywhere

4. Online collaborative visualization
Where does it fit into the visualization development spectrum?
Three ways to build a data visualization
Programming: Java/C#, Flash, or Processing (
Scripting (light weight programming): Mathematica, MatLab, etc.
Point & Click: Tableau, Spotfire, etc.
Online collaborative visualization

5. Notable web sites Many Eyes Swivel Data360 DabbleDB
Swivel
Data360
DabbleDB

6. Major components Data collection and manipulation
Data visualization construction
Social aspects of collaborative analysis
Commenting
Sharing
Perment URL (for bookmarking)
Snap shots

7. Demonstrations

8. Discussion Data model Visualization Mostly table based data sets
Basic chart types: bar chart, line plot, pie chart, scatter plot, etc.
Many Eyes offers more and fancier chart types

9. Discussion User interactions Social interactions Selecting chart types
Sorting, data filtering, etc.
Tooltip, color palette, etc.
Social interactions
Lively comments and discussions?

10. Discussion The trend and pattern:
Is this the future of data visualization?
How many people are using it?
Who are using it? For what?
What percentage of the users are really active? What percentage are just casual users?
Are there lively discussions?

11. Discussion How does the usage look like over time?
How many data visualizations are created for each time period?
Any patterns in the usage data?
What kind of visualization attract people more? Why?

12. Summary Online data sharing and visualization is a recent phenomenon
Part of the larger trend of Web 2.0 and cloud computing
The collaborative aspect of the online visualization is still not fully developed
Compare to other collaborative platform like Wikipedia, Flickr, etc.

13. References A comparison of Swivel and Many Eyes (written in 2007)
F. Viegas, et al. “Many Eyes: A Site for Visualization at Internet Scale,” IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 2007
A comparison of Swivel and Many Eyes (written in 2007)