Do you see us?—Applied visual analytics for the investigation of group coordination

Group coordination is a relevant prerequisite for understanding the effectiveness of groups. But, contrary to the large number of empirical studies, only a few studies concentrate on the development of analysis methods …

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Abstract

Group coordination is a relevant prerequisite for understanding the effectiveness of groups. But, contrary to the large number of empirical studies, only a few studies concentrate on the development of analysis methods of coordination in groups. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to give a summary of the opportunities and limitations of common methods for capturing group coordination in applied field settings and to outline how visual analytics approaches might add to the common methods. Based on two illustrated visual analytics implementation examples—1) coordination and movements of soccer players, and 2) spatio-temporal event data—the potential of visual analytics approaches is identified for studying a greater variety of types of group coordination, and to consider the multifaceted nature of group processes in order to go beyond traditional coding processes.

Figures

A group research process (left) in the blue area can be supported by VA approaches (right).Where the iterative VA approaches are integrated with the traditional methods is defined in an interdisciplinary research team depending on the research questions to be answered

Two example views from a simple interactive VA display (Bleisch and Hollenstein 2018). Left: Data about expressions on contact opportunities are aggregated across an area and displayed as a density map. This view is interactively linked with — Right: a symbolized representation of positive expressions with regard to different topics. In an explorative VA setting, the interdisciplinary research team interactively works with the two views to refine data categorization as well as linking the areal coverages of the different topical data dimensions

The Bluegrass Family’s movement in a museum gallery space is shown over space and space-time (Shapiro 2018, p. 10). Copyright © by Ben Rydal Shapiro. Reprinted by friendly permission of Ben Shapiro

Tabletops for task types “team brainstorming” (a, c) or “team design” (b,d)

BibTeX

@article{rack_DoYouSeeUsAppliedVA4GroupCoord_2019,
 abstract = {Group coordination is a relevant prerequisite for understanding the effectiveness of groups. But, contrary to the large number of empirical studies, only a few studies concentrate on the development of analysis methods of coordination in groups. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to give a summary of the opportunities and limitations of common methods for capturing group coordination in applied field settings and to outline how visual analytics approaches might add to the common methods. Based on two illustrated visual analytics implementation examples—1) coordination and movements of soccer players, and 2) spatio-temporal event data—the potential of visual analytics approaches is identified for studying a greater variety of types of group coordination, and to consider the multifaceted nature of group processes in order to go beyond traditional coding processes.},
 author = {Rack, Oliver and Zahn, Carmen and Bleisch, Susanne},
 doi = {10.1007/s11612-019-00449-1},
 journal = {Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Organisationspsychologie (GIO)},
 number = {1},
 pages = {53--60},
 title = {Do you see us?—{Applied} visual analytics for the investigation of group coordination},
 url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11612-019-00449-1},
 volume = {50},
 year = {2019}
}