The 2nd MERCADO Workshop at IEEE VIS 2025: Multimodal Experiences for Remote Communication Around Data Online

2025-04-22

AI Summary

This study addresses persistent interaction bottlenecks in data-intensive multimodal remote collaboration—particularly during synchronous, remote, and hybrid analytical tasks involving data exploration, decision-making, and reporting. Method: Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, we convened workshops integrating expertise from visualization, human–computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), multimodal sensing, and AI-augmented collaboration. Grounded in empirical design research and contextually situated evaluation, the project systematically unifies four core dimensions: tooling, individual differences, AI-mediated coordination, and rigorous assessment. Contribution/Results: The work yields an internationally validated challenge taxonomy and a forward-looking research roadmap. It establishes an open, sustainable collaboration network and delivers both a theoretical framework and actionable design guidelines for next-generation remote data collaboration systems.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Mining of Visual, Multimedia & Multimodal Data
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

We propose a half-day workshop at IEEE VIS 2025 on addressing the emerging challenges in data-rich multimodal remote collaboration. We focus on synchronous, remote, and hybrid settings where people take part in tasks such as data analysis, decision-making, and presentation. With this workshop, we continue successful prior work from the first MERCADO workshop at VIS 2023 and a 2024 Shonan Seminar that followed. Based on the findings of the earlier events, we invite research and ideas related to four themes of challenges: Tools&Technologies, Individual Differences&Interpersonal Dynamics, AI-assisted Collaboration, and Evaluation. With this workshop, we aim to broaden the community, foster new collaborations, and develop a research agenda to address these challenges in future research. Our planned workshop format is comprised of a keynote, short presentations, a breakout group session, and discussions organized around the identified challenges.

Problem

• Addressing challenges in data-rich multimodal remote collaboration
• Focusing on synchronous remote hybrid data analysis tasks
• Exploring tools AI dynamics evaluation for future research

Innovation

• Focus on multimodal remote collaboration challenges
• Explore AI-assisted collaboration technologies
• Develop tools for synchronous hybrid settings