Business decision-makers are increasingly exposed to using, processing, and analyzing very large amounts of data and such exposure has resulted in data interpretation problems as data are generated at higher rates and with finer accuracy. One such data type, a network data set, is the subject of the present work. Network data sets present some challenges to data visualization, which are unknown to the visualization of tabular data sets. The visualization feature complements purely analytical tools for longstanding and new problems in network data analysis. This paper describes an innovative solution to seeing data, interpreting network data, and using network data for improved decision-making in business. The core of our work is the design, build and test of a mixed-reality environment capable of retrieving data from any given data set and displaying them in a navigable, distributed, virtual environment that will provide an immersive visually sensory experience of the data. The environment allows the interaction of several decision-makers and uses a mix of virtual and augmented reality (XR) technologies.

In this research demo we present three immersive scenarios on
three XR modalities – VR, immersive AR on HoloLens and 2D
AR on Android. These scenarios are a network of Harry Potter
characters in VR, a map-based visualization of a soldier’s history
with rich attributes including images and sound on HoloLens, and
a visualization of car racing on Android. These visualizations
have been created with Aroaro our distributed mixed reality data
visualization tool.

Keywords: Augmented reality, Virtual reality, Mixed reality,
Data visualization, Immersive analytics, Multi-user, Networks.

We present a novel way to support business organizations’ decision-making in the context of analysis of network data sets. For such a purpose we built a mixed-reality, multi-user platform, which we named Aroaro and can be deployed on different virtual reality and augmented reality devices. In Aroaro, users can experience data visualization, either individually or as part of a team. With a set of lab tasks designed to lead lab subjects to analyze the network information while immersing into the rich virtual environment, our approach belongs to the nascent area of immersive analytics. We assume a business unit has already procured some network data set and been tasked with problems that need to reveal information about the network’s connectivity properties. This paper is concerned with how a business unit achieves problem solving (decisionmaking) when relying on immersive analytics. Our approach combines a high-quality virtual environment such as Aroaro, its data visualization engine and the analytics afforded by concepts of network centrality in a network. We report on preliminary results of having lab subjects experience two visualization environments: a 3D visualization system on a 2D-flat screen and our mixed-reality, multi-user platform for network data visualization.