Supporting Handoff in Asynchronous Collaborative Sensemaking Using Knowledge-Transfer Graphs

Abstract

Supporting Handoff in Asynchronous Collaborative Sensemaking Using Knowledge-Transfer Graphs

Jian Zhao, Michael Glueck, Petra Isenberg, Fanny Chevalier, Azam Khan

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2018 (Best Paper Honorable Mention Award)

During asynchronous collaborative analysis, handoff of partial findings is challenging because externalizations producedby analysts may not adequately communicate their investigative process. To address this challenge, we developed techniques toautomatically capture and help encode tacit aspects of the investigative process based on an analyst’s interactions, and streamlineexplicit authoring of handoff annotations. We designed our techniques to mediate awareness of analysis coverage, support explicitcommunication of progress and uncertainty with annotation, and implicit communication through playback of investigation histories. Toevaluate our techniques, we developed an interactive visual analysis system, KTGraph, that supports an asynchronous investigativedocument analysis task. We conducted a two-phase user study to characterize a set of handoff strategies and to compare investigativeperformance with and without our techniques. The results suggest that our techniques promote the use of more effective handoffstrategies, help increase an awareness of prior investigative process and insights, as well as improve final investigative outcomes.