Learn more about Visage on the archived Visage web pages

How do you make critical decisions when your best intelligence is flooding databases, scattered across maps, charts, and spreadsheets, or is locked inside the heads of geographically remote specialists? Too much information, too little information, or the right information at the wrong time can kill troops on the battlefield and kill companies in the marketplace.

MAYA developed an information-centric environment that we call Visage. We removed the notion of documents, focusing instead on information as objects so that decision makers can literally get their hands on the data. They can find, organize, share, and directly interact with large amounts of diverse information across platforms and data types.

Visage tackled polymorphism, the key to successful information collaboration. Many users can view the same dataset, but they can each visualize that data in different ways, depending of their individual roles and needs. For example, one user might view information on a time line, while another might simultaneously view the same information as a map. Polymorphic collaboration makes that possible while maintaining synchronicity between the visualizations. Because both users view the same data merely in different forms, changing information on the time line instantly transforms the same information visualized as a map.

Results

DARPA has selected our Visage framework for their Command Post of the Future initiative, funding new research into the realms of augmented cognition, liquid agents, and worldwide dataflow.

MAYA’s Visage research has also led to commercial applications for this new kind of “data conferencing.” We spun off MAYA Viz (now part of General Dynamics) to develop commercial applications of this research through a product called “CoMotion.” Unlike other collaboration software that focuses on group communication, CoMotion makes group knowledge-sharing possible. It frees people from laborious verbal exchanges that are usually necessary for gaining insight. Real-time collaboration becomes so intuitive that team members often tell us that they feel as if they know what each other is thinking. Knowledge becomes visible.