Challenges in Synchronous & Remote Collaboration Around Visualization
Matthew Brehmer, Maxime Cordeil, Christophe Hurter, Takayuki Itoh, Wolfgang Büschel, Mahmood Jasim et al. · 2026 · 1 citationsRead the paper
We characterize 16 challenges faced by those investigating and developing remote and synchronous collaborative experiences around visualization. Our work reflects the perspectives and prior research efforts of an international group of 29 experts from across human-computer interaction and visualization sub-communities. The challenges are anchored around five collaborative activities that exhibit a centrality of visualization and multimodal communication. These activities include exploratory data analysis, creative ideation, visualization-rich presentations, joint decision making grounded in data, and real-time data monitoring. The challenges also reflect the changing dynamics of these activities in the face of recent advances in extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI). As an organizing scheme for future research at the intersection of visualization and computer-supported cooperative work, we align the challenges with a sequence of four sets of research and development activities: technological choices, social factors, AI assistance, and evaluation.
3 ideas Seedlabs derived from this research
A real-time AI assistant that automatically documents decisions and insights made during synchronous, remote data exploration sessions.
AI score 69/100A synchronous visualization tool that uses AI to help remote teams transform raw exploratory data analysis into structured, presentation-ready narratives in real-time.
AI score 54/100A specialized remote collaboration tool that synchronizes high-fidelity data visualizations with multimodal communication to facilitate joint decision-making.
AI score 50/100