HeedVision: Attention Awareness in Collaborative Immersive Analytics Environments

TL;DR

HeedVision introduces collaborative attention-aware visualizations in immersive environments, enhancing coordination and efficiency in joint data analysis tasks through attention revisualization in AR/VR systems.

Contribution

This work extends attention awareness to multi-user immersive analytics, demonstrating its positive impact on collaboration and task performance.

Findings

Improved spatial coordination among users

Enhanced search efficiency in collaborative tasks

Reduced task load through attention revisualization

Abstract

Group awareness--the ability to perceive the activities of collaborators in a shared space--is a vital mechanism to support effective coordination and joint data analysis in collaborative visualization. We introduce collaborative attention-aware visualizations (CAAVs) that track, record, and revisualize the collective attention of multiple users over time. We implement this concept in HeedVision, a standards-compliant WebXR system that runs on modern AR/VR headsets. Through a user study where pairs of analysts performed visual search tasks in HeedVision, we demonstrate how attention revisualization enhances collaborative performance in immersive analytics. Our findings reveal that CAAVs improve spatial coordination, search efficiency, and task load distribution among collaborators, with benefits varying by visualization context. This work extends attention awareness from individual to multi-user settings and provides empirical evidence for its benefits in collaborative immersive analytics.