Work Trace Visualiser: Connecting and Visualising Digital Trace Data to Understand Workgroups and Collaborative Work

To understand how workgroups and their digitally supported work practices evolve over time, existing research highlights the value of longitudinal analyses that span extended spatial and temporal frames. In response, we developed the Work Trace Visualiser , a timeline-based visualisation and analysis tool that integrates records from a long-term diary study on synchronous work with digital trace data from collaboration systems used by the same workgroups. Rather than analysing the datasets side by side, our application focuses on connecting both by mapping shared attributes such as time and actors. The Work Trace Visualiser offers filter controls for visualising work practices of individual workgroups by interactively zooming in and out on the dimensions of time, involved actors and work artefacts. Embedded within a design science research cycle, we evaluated the tool’s capabilities using real-world data from specific workgroups and demonstrate that rich visualisations and descriptions of temporal and artefact-based collaboration patterns can be effectively generated. The main contribution of this work is to provide a foundation for conducting computational ethnographies of workgroups at a larger scale, enabling richer and more comprehensive descriptions than previously possible.