What does “collaborate” refer to? According to the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, “collaborate” is to work together with somebody in order to produce or achieve something. This brief sentence points out a common blind point at work. The meaning of collaboration shouldn’t be confined to “working with somebody”. More importantly, those who work together ought to possess a common goal, which is an achievement desired by all participants.

Starting from this definition, most work meetings in organizations should be taken seriously as “collaborative meetings”. In meetings, every associated attendant, even though they have diverse concepts and opinions based on their different job duties, experiences, and personalities, contributes to a certain issue. Therefore, all attendants listen to each other, draw up discussions, and attempt to reach a consensus. Furthermore, the consensus extends to drawing up strategies or solutions, which is regarded as the basic purpose of collaborative meetings.

In recent years, a popular concept known as “infovis” (information visualization), has emerged in the field of interpersonal communication and information dissemination, particularly among industrial application studies. It has become an indispensable technique for modern management, a widely discussed topic in the Industry 4.0 era. Infovis is a technology of graphical expression, turning information and data into images and graphs that people can directly perceive and understand. It helps significantly in the presentation of information and data as well as the disclosure of more subtle messages, and further serves as the basis of decision making.

“An ideal visualization should not only communicate clearly, but stimulate viewer engagement and attention”, an elaborate remark on information visualization from How to make data look sexy, a feature run by CNN.

In short, the core technique of information visualization is to visualize those rigid words and figures required to be transformed and interpreted by our brains with direct viewing, to convey abstract information, and to inspire all kinds of thoughts such as analyses, reasoning, and decision making. Common graphs include mind maps and decision tress, both of which help critical thinking, as well as coordinated plots, histograms, and scatter diagrams, which assist in comparing information. They are not only static charts, but also animated visual messages which can be dynamically updated.

The greatest benefit of applying visualization is that direct viewing figures can accelerate communication and reduce misjudgments, especially when there are a lot of participants in diverse working situations. New technological tools for collaborative meetings are necessary to be moderately introduced as auxiliaries.

The difference between interactive touch displays, used in new meeting patterns, particularly collaborative meetings, and the electronic whiteboards used previously is that the core focus of touch display lies in people and that it pays more attention to the corresponding needs of interaction and collaboration. In terms of hardware, it needs to reinforce image performance and touch response, and avoid distraction among attendants resulting from distortions and sync problems. On the other hand, interactive touch display technology emphasizes the utility of internet connections, requiring high speed, instant switching between sources, and low lag.. In addition to smoothly browsing dynamic webpages, high speed connectivity improves the quality of videos. In terms of software, avoiding the drawbacks of electronic whiteboards (which have input delay), interactive touch display technology promptly responds to writing by users, keeping up with the tempo of meetings. With sensitive multitouch, it allows several users to draw and mark simultaneously, realizing instant communications.

With new tools and new attitudes, let’s see how modern visualized meetings change collaborative efforts.

(1) Engage the full attention of hosts and meeting leads: meeting leaders need to not only speak but also edit, mark, draw mind maps and inter-relationship diagrams at the same time, “visualizing the discussion process”.

There are two advantages here. First of all, it reduces lead’s authority, easing the atmosphere while discussions go on. Secondly, once the lead, who is usually a senior colleague or top management, is engaged, the presiding power tends to be yielded and more participants are encouraged to elaborate their own ideas, contributing to diverse development of discussions.

(2) Brisk-form meetings: the graphical presentations businesses promote currently are also known as “information visualization”. Besides formalized graphs of work schedules, brainstorming strategy meetings urge creative expression in various patterns. Interactive touch display supports content like presentation PowerPoints, documents, pictures, files, websites, and applications, which is beneficial for creative communication.

(3) Meeting attendants can engage in remote participation: meeting members aren’t limited to staying at the same place. By doing so, more interested parties related to the issue can be invited. One advantage of the new technology is to accommodating multi-point video conferences at the same time and realizing true communication of “visualized emotions” by allowing people to see each other’s faces, a huge improvement over voice-only teleconferences.

(4) Following-up after meetings is more convenient: Interactive touch display can send meeting minutes with zero errors immediately. All you need to do is scan a QR code for downloading and sharing. With a “visualized consensus”, nobody has an excuse for forgetfulness.

According to the latest survey on workplaces conducted by Gensler of Germany, “state-of-the-art technology“ is viewed as one of the three driving forces at high performance workplaces, exceeding such traditional factors as “completely meeting work requirements” and “clear organizational hierarchy”. Meanwhile, the Workforce of the Future Report by Dell and Intel shows that up to 31% of young workers between 18 and 34 years old in Germany quit their jobs since their companies didn’t provide sufficient technology.

The figure, admittedly, centers on the preference of young workers for new technology to the extent that senior workers criticize it as “vanity and superficiality”. And yet after exploring deeply, the likes and dislikes of young workers originate from the expectation for efficient work. The resistance of senior workers may stem from unfamiliarity with new technology. However, they co-exist in all kinds of work teams that require different generation workers to collaborate on tasks. The purpose of collaboration is to “reach common achievement” in the end. New facilities (like interactive touch display) bring forth better atmosphere for creativity and work efficiency. Through technology, senior workers may cooperate more smoothly with younger generations of employees, encouraging a fusion of experience and fresh ideas.