A Study of Zooming, Interactive Lenses and Overview plus Detail Techniques in Collaborative Map-based Tasks

The support for multi-focus data exploration is vital in collaborative visualization. In these scenarios, which often involve multiple devices and large displays, users may focus on specific information on their individual screens while also sharing contextual views with others. While many visualization techniques developed for single-user applications can be adapted for use in collaborative settings, little research has been done on how to design adaptive versions of these techniques or how they may impact collaborative tasks involving large datasets. In this work, we perform a comparative study of three collaborative visualization techniques (Zooming, Interactive lenses and Overview+Detail) on large displays in three map-based visualization tasks (Exploration, Comparison and Spatial Memorizing). These three collaborative techniques draw on three different classical visualization techniques in a single-user setting. Our results show that these techniques have different impacts on users' task performance and preferences. The collaborative Overview+Detail technique benefits users most in supporting Spatial Memorizing. Closely coupled groups prefer collaborative Zooming in Target Exploration. Based on these results, we further discuss the design of collaborative visualization techniques and propose suggestions for adapting classical single-user visualization techniques to a collaborative setting.