We characterize 16 challenges faced by those investigating and developing remote and synchronous collaborative experiences around visualization. Our work reflects the perspectives and prior research efforts of an international group of 29 experts from across human-computer interaction and visualization sub-communities. The challenges are anchored around five collaborative activities that exhibit a centrality of visualization and multimodal communication. These activities include exploratory data analysis, creative ideation, visualization-rich presentations, joint decision making grounded in data, and real-time data monitoring. The challenges also reflect the changing dynamics of these activities in the face of recent advances in extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI). As an organizing scheme for future research at the intersection of visualization and computer-supported cooperative work, we align the challenges with a sequence of four sets of research and development activities: technological choices, social factors, AI assistance, and evaluation.

Figure 1: From left to right: (a) the original website, (b) Option 1 (Regenerated HTML), and (c) Option 2 (Reorganized HTML Tags).Option 1 is generated using a GenAI-powered extension that rewrites the HTML to enhance accessibility, while Option 2 reorganizes the original HTML tags to address accessibility issues without altering the visual design.This example highlights the changes made in both versions compared to the original website.Both versions simplify navigation by removing single-category headings, reducing clutter and minimizing fatigue for screen reader users.

Due to the increased availability of internet-based services, the number of e-commerce users among older adults is steadily growing. However, little is known about how older adults would adapt to modern e-commerce services, especially in the case of customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplaces as buyers and sellers. To address that, we propose a closed-domain conversational chatbot assistant that guides older adults through the product listing process. We evaluated the usability of our tool with 10 participants, consisting of a pre-test survey and a post-task interview. We found that while older adults proficiently operated with familiar functions such as text entry and photo taking, they faced challenges in understanding the purpose of each task and how tasks were related to each other. We suggest design implications for creating conversational chatbot assistants that help older adults sell items in C2C marketplaces.

Inaccessible e-commerce websites and mobile applications exclude people with visual impairments (PVI) from online shopping. Customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplaces, a form of e-commerce where trading happens not between businesses and customers but between customers, could pose a unique set of challenges in the interactions that the platform brings about. Through online questionnaire and remote interviews, we investigate problems experienced by people with low vision disabilities in common C2C scenarios. Our study with low vision participants (N = 12) reveal both previously known general accessibility issues (e.g., web and mobile interface accessibility) and C2C specific accessibility issues (e.g., inability to confirm item condition prior to sales).

Multi-user virtual reality is transforming towards a social activity that is no longer only used by remote users, but also in large-scale location-based experiences. Usage of realtime-tracked avatars in colocated business-oriented applications with a “guide-user-scenario” is examined for user-related factors of Spatial Presence, Social Presence, User Experience and Task Load. A user study was conducted in order to compare both techniques of a realtime-tracked avatar and a non-visualised guide. Results reveal that the avatar-guide enhanced and stimulated communicative processes while facilitating interaction possibilities and creating a higher sense of mental immersion for users and engagement.

Live streaming is becoming an increasingly popular medium for social interaction on mobile devices. However, in most cases live streaming experience is still confined to a single-viewpoint, monoscopic video stream, which, in active scenarios such as outdoor or public event broadcasting, makes it hard or even impossible for viewers to understand a remote situation. This study investigates how live stream viewing can be improved through introduction of user spatial data into video stream composition and interaction, by developing a system that allows watching multiple spatially oriented video streams in virtual spaces simultaneously, and interaction with them through voice and spatially distributed reaction buttons. According to results of a preliminary study, users show a statistically significant interest in using spatial live stream viewing and interaction features. Believing that this solution presents a novel approach to social live video streaming, the rest of the article discusses the results and possible extensions of developed system.

We have developed a phantom gui emulator that can read from otherwise stand-alone applications, complementing a separate parallel program that can write to such applications. In conjunction with the "Alice" desktop vr system and previously developed "Collaborative Virtual Environment" both of which are freely available, virtual scene exploration can synchronize with multimodal peers, including panoramic browsers, spatial sound renderers, and smartphone and tablet interfaces.