Collaborative sensemaking requires that analysts share their information and
insights with each other, but this process of sharing runs the risks of
prematurely focusing the investigation on specific suspects. To address this
tension, we propose and test an interface for collaborative crime analysis that
aims to make analysts more aware of their sensemaking processes. We compare our
sensemaking translucence interface to a standard interface without special
sensemaking features in a controlled laboratory study. We found that the
sensemaking translucence interface significantly improved clue finding and
crime solving performance, but that analysts rated the interface lower on
subjective measures than the standard interface. We conclude that designing for
distributed sensemaking requires balancing task performance vs. user experience
and real-time information sharing vs. data accuracy.Comment: ACM SIGCHI CSCW 201
