Geovisual football analytics: towards the development of an interactive visual interface for football coaches, analysts and players

Abstract

Due to recent technological advancements, large volumes of movement data are being collected about almost anything that moves. Professional football organizations also have access to these increasing data volumes. However, literature shows that the capacity to collect data has not been matched by the ability to process it in meaningful ways. The question, therefore, is how to transform this data into useful information on which coaches, analysts and players dare to base their decisions and communicate found results? This research contributes to this development by proposing ways to make movement data more accessible for football clubs by developing a conceptual visual interface to visually explore and analyze concerted movements. The term concerted movement is used to indicate the coordinated movements of multiple objects in relation to each other and the spatiotemporal context in which they move.

Visual interfaces are tools dealing with large amounts of movement data. They can yield knowledge and insight by establishing an interactive relationship between humans and machines that allow users to look at a subject from different perspectives and allow them to modify the data using different visual analytics tools. From an academic point of view, it looks like interfaces are potentially very powerful to explore, analyze and communicate movement patterns to extract relevant information from spatiotemporal data. However, the involvement of users and a successful identification of their needs is often underestimated if not overlooked altogether. This research project tries to alleviate this problem by investigating user requirements prior to the development process of a conceptual visual interface. To realize this objective, the User Centred Design (UCD) methodology is followed.

This research has shown that there is a sincere need for more user research in the fields of geo-information science with a focus on geovisual football analytics. What must further be developed is the incorporation of user requirements and design for the needs of specific users. Therefore, it is recommended that the conceptual visual interface is turned into a high-fidelity prototype that is implemented and subjected to various iterations of usability research. Furthermore, it is recommended that future football analytics research embraces a more multidisciplinary approach to support the visual exploration and analysis of spatiotemporal data.