Do you see us? Applied visual analytics for the investigation of group coordination

Abstract

Group coordination is a relevant prerequisite for understanding the effectiveness of groups. But, contrary to the large number of empirical studies, only a few studies concentrate on the development of analysis methods of coordination in groups. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to give a summary of the opportunities and limitations of common methods for capturing group coordination in applied field settings and to outline how visual analytics approaches might add to the common methods. Based on two illustrated visual analytics implementation examples—1) coordination and movements of soccer players, and 2) spatio-temporal event data—the potential of visual analytics approaches is identified for studying a greater variety of types of group coordination, and to consider the multifaceted nature of group processes in order to go beyond traditional coding processes.