Design Decisions for Weave: A Real-Time Web-based Collaborative Visualization Framework

TL;DR

Weave is an open-source, web-based visualization framework designed for real-time collaboration, supporting interactive linked visualizations and session history to enhance usability and scalability.

Contribution

This paper introduces Weave, a novel visualization platform emphasizing real-time remote collaboration and session history, with detailed design considerations and comparisons to existing systems.

Findings

Supports highly interactive linked visualizations

Enables real-time remote collaboration with session history

Offers broad data visualization capabilities

Abstract

There are many web-based visualization systems available to date, each having its strengths and limitations. The goals these systems set out to accomplish influence design decisions and determine how reusable and scalable they are. Weave is a new web-based visualization platform with the broad goal of enabling visualization of any available data by anyone for any purpose. Our open source framework supports highly interactive linked visualizations for users of varying skill levels. What sets Weave apart from other systems is its consideration for real-time remote collaboration with session history. We provide a detailed account of the various framework designs we considered with comparisons to existing state-of-the-art systems.