Open AccessJournal Article10.1109/TVCG.2020.3030366

VisConnect: Distributed Event Synchronization for Collaborative Visualization

- 28 Jan 2021

- IEEE Transactions on Visualization and C...

- Vol. 27, Iss: 2, pp 347-357

TL;DR: VisConnect is a web- based synchronous distributed collaborative visualization system that supports most web-based SVG data visualizations, balances system safety with responsiveness, and supports simultaneous interaction from many collaborators.

Abstract: Tools and interfaces are increasingly expected to be synchronous and distributed to accommodate remote collaboration. Yet, adoption of these techniques for data visualization is low partly because development is difficult: existing collaboration software systems either do not support simultaneous interaction or require expensive redevelopment of existing visualizations. We contribute VisConnect: a web-based synchronous distributed collaborative visualization system that supports most web-based SVG data visualizations, balances system safety with responsiveness, and supports simultaneous interaction from many collaborators. VisConnect works with existing visualization implementations with little-to-no code changes by synchronizing low-level JavaScript events across clients such that visualization updates proceed transparently across clients. This is accomplished via a peer-to-peer system that establishes consensus among clients on the per-element sequence of events, and uses a lock service to grant access over elements to clients. We contribute collaborative extensions of traditional visualization interaction techniques, such as drag, brush, and lasso, and discuss different strategies for collaborative visualization interactions. To demonstrate the utility of VisConnect, we present novel examples of collaborative visualizations in the healthcare domain, remote collaboration with annotation, and show in an education case study for e-learning with 22 participants that students found the ability to remotely collaborate on class activities helpful and enjoyable for understanding concepts. A free copy of this paper and source code are available on OSF at osf.io/ut7e6 and at visconnect.us.

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Most frequently asked questions

1. What are the contributions in "Visconnect: distributed event synchronization for collaborative visualization" ?

The authors contribute collaborative extensions of traditional visualization interaction techniques, such as drag, brush, and lasso, and discuss different strategies for collaborative visualization interactions.. To demonstrate the utility of VisConnect, the authors present novel examples of collaborative visualizations in the healthcare domain, remote collaboration with annotation, and show in an education case study for e-learning with 22 participants that students found the ability to remotely collaborate on class activities helpful and enjoyable for understanding concepts.. A free copy of this paper and source code are available on OSF at osf.

2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Visconnect: distributed event synchronization for collaborative visualization" ?

In this section, the authors discuss the lessons learned from this work, point out the strengths and weaknesses of their approach, and identify opportunities for future collaborative visualization research.. To increase compatibility with non-direct data manipulations, the authors hope to support customizable partitioning strategies in the future.. The design space for distributed collaborative interaction needs to be characterized in future research ; VisConnect is helpful for discovering and exploring this design space.. These trade-offs will be explored in future work.

Fig. 9. A collaborative scenario where a doctor (top) and a patient (bottom) use IDMVis to share decision-making processes in diabetes management with the help of VisConnect. After the doctor selects a

Fig. 4. Event synchronization can achieve the same visual update across clients: From an initial starting visualization across clients (1), a click (2) by client 1 makes the corresponding visualization code respond and update the visualization accordingly (3). If the click event (2) is broadcast to client 2 and then re-emitted, client 2’s visualization code will react as per client 1 and update the visualizations synchronously.

Fig. 3. An illustration of one of the challenges of synchronizing the DOM across clients. Synchronizing the visualization directly conflicts with data binding. Client 2’s DOM is updated based on the changes by Client 1, but the data connected to the DOM is now out of date.

Fig. 2. There are three possible entry points for synchronization within the update cycle of web-based data visualizations. Interactions, such as click or drag events; the application logic which updates the internal state through JavaScript code based on new information; and the visualization, which renders the output. To achieve synchronous collaboration, systems must reproduce this update cycle for all clients.

Fig. 10. A scenario where two collaborators are using Live Website Annotate to scrutinize a graph on Wikipedia. Live Website Annotate provides three main modes: Annotate (currently active)–allows annotating with a solid line, Highlight–allows highlighting with a opaque thicker line, and Interact–allows interaction with the underlying web page. A text-based chat is also available to communicate with other connected collaborators.

Fig. 5. Possible data visualization collaboration system architectures. Bottom left: Application logic synchronization gives flexibility to visualization developers, but ties collaboration code to specific visualization code which hurts reuse. Top right: Synchronizing SVG DOM visualizations is more generalizable, but breaks the data visualization update cycle as it is ignorant of data binding. Top left: Synchronizing user interactions is general because DOM events are standard browser events, and it is compatible with data binding because any updates to the visualization flow through the application logic. On the other hand, depending on implementation, the flow through the application logic may not always happen in exactly the same way or have the same results. This is a challenge in the JS Event Synchronization approach.

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VisConnect: Distributed Event Synchronization for Collaborative Visualization

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Most frequently asked questions

1. What are the contributions in "Visconnect: distributed event synchronization for collaborative visualization" ?

2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Visconnect: distributed event synchronization for collaborative visualization" ?

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Citations

A survey of urban visual analytics: Advances and future directions

Time-lined capturing & delivering of events with SVG & audio overlays: An interactive & versioned content delivery

Through Their Eyes and In Their Shoes: Providing Group Awareness During Collaboration Across Virtual Reality and Desktop Platforms

ComputableViz: Mathematical Operators as a Formalism for Visualisation Processing and Analysis

Visualization Tools for Collaborative Systems: A Systematic Review

References

The part-time parliament

D³ Data-Driven Documents

Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics

Proving the Correctness of Multiprocess Programs

Concurrency control in groupware systems

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