Visualizing Opportunities of Collaboration in Large Research Organizations

In order to support interdisciplinary collaboration in a large organization, providing opportunities to meet new collaborators is essential. Besides offline approaches (e.g., conferences, colloquia, etc.) data driven and online approaches can be considered. Using the publication data and the additional profile information of researchers on a scientific portal, we try to support the process of uncovering opportunities for collaboration. For this purpose we develop a visualization that focuses on revealing potential co-authors that are a good fit according to trackrecord and profile information. In a design study we present the result of an iterative user-centered design process – a novel prototype and its evaluation. Overall, our visualization was able to inform researchers about valid collaboration opportunities while at the same time effectively conveying organizational information. Our prototype showed a high usability and loyalty score (SUS=82.5, NPS=40).