DIVA focuses on visualizing information from different perspectives. We can distinguish between two distinct phases of activities within this approach.
The first phase is to define and experiment with the perspectives. This activity is done mostly in solitude, although multiple users can share a primary model or a derived model. The purpose is to determine the information need and the relevant data for that need. The second phase is that of multiple users collaborating by reviewing and discussing the different defined perspectives. This article focuses on the latter, the collaboration phase.
When a group of people collaborates, the group members must share a common workspace (Ellis et al., 1991). The task of a group of users is to interact with each other and present different views on shared information. Let us assume that the goal is to reach a decision, for instance, concerning which model to choose for a business process re-design project, as in the example of Section 2.