Planning for Information Visualization in Mixed-Initiative Systems

This paper describes two forms of information visualization for mixed-initiative systems associated with team collaboration and begins to discuss how plans might be formulated to achieve the visualizations. Common understanding visualization is concerned with visualizing the information a team employs, whereas visual collaboration is concerned with visualizing the ongoing, incremental information collection, the credibility and origins of that information, and the dynamic interpersonal relationships of the team itself. The first is the more "classic" form of visualization where data and information is collected, analyzed, abstracted, and tailored for display to the user. We are concerned not only with visualization for the single user, but also with visualizing the relationship the information holds in regard to the entire team. At the level of the individual user, a mixed-initiative system must consider how to tailor the appropriate information given the user's skill, expertise, and preferences. At the corporate level, a system must manage the display of information across multiple human users and system components that share a common goal. The second form of visualization deals with the collaboration between a user and his/her mixed-initiative system, between users, and between systems. That is, the user needs to understand and visualize the collaboration, how the user fits into it, and the associated human/information interaction and processes involved in human/information interaction and processes involved in such collaboration. We claim both types of visualization are important for effective collaboration.