Pinpoint: A Design Study in Interactive Visualization for Finding People in a Large Organization

This design study reports on how information visualization was applied to the common problem for knowledge workers to find people with relevant expertise and interests in a large organization. The outcome is the Pinpoint concept, an interactive visualization where the user's most closely related colleagues are presented radially for browsing, filtering and further exploration of the topical networks of the organization. Based on design reasoning and empirical validation, we claim that the concept approaches desirability as well as usefulness and usability in its intended use situation. We further argue that it is feasible for deployment under certain conditions, and that it is applicable in a range of large organizations if organization-specific policies and standards are taken into account.