Comparing visualization techniques to structure collaborative concepts

Much research has been devoted to collaborative tools for writing, group communication, reviewing, managing projects, and developing network infrastructures to support sharing activities. However the creation and display of foundational collaborative concepts that manage group work has not been paid significant attention. Information visualization potentially addresses the progression of distributed concept building and presentation by visually representing group-generated concepts. This paper analyzes current visualization-based techniques including tag clouds, node-link diagrams, and mapping structures in a web-based environment. The analysis contributes to exploring the use of visualization tools for creating group concept structures that organize ideas for documents, projects, or specifications in academia and industry. A comparative features table is built and used as a basis for presenting an initial interface design to develop a collaborative visualization tool for concept management. Implications for future work include visualization system interface design, user evaluation, and adaptation to mobile collaborative visualization environments.