We are investigating ways in which media space technologies can support distributed work groups through access to information that supports general awareness. Awareness involves knowing who is “around”, what activities are occurring, who is talking with whom; it provides a view of one another in the daily work environments. Awareness may lead to informal interactions, spontaneous connections, and the development of shared cultures—all important aspects of maintaining working relationships which are denied to groups distributed across multiple sites. The Portholes project, at Rank Xerox EuroPARC in

Many collaborative and communicative environments use notions of “space ” and spatial organisation to facilitate and structure interaction. We argue that a focus on spatial models is misplaced. Drawing on understandings from architecture and urban design, as well as from our own research findings, we highlight the critical distinction between “space ” and “place”. While designers use spatial models to support interaction, we show how it is actually a notion of “place ” which frames interactive behaviour. This leads us to re-evaluate spatial systems, and discuss how “place”, rather than “space”, can support CSCW design.

Current developments in information technology are leading to increasing capture and storage of information about people and their activities. This raises serious issues about the preservation of privacy. In this paper we examine why these issues are particularly important in the introduction of ubiquitous computing technology into the working environment. Certain problems with privacy are closely related to the ways in which the technology attenuates natural mechanisms of feedback and control over information released. We describe a framework for design for privacy in ubiquitous computing environments and conclude with an example of its application. INTRODUCTION Information technology can store, transmit and manipulate vast quantities and varieties of information. Whilst this potential is essential to government, public services, business and individuals, it may also permit or entail unobtrusive access, manipulation and presentation of personal data (Parker et al., 1990; Dunlop & Kl...

The rich person-to-person interaction afforded by shared physical workspaces allows people to maintain up-to-the minute knowledge about others ’ interaction with the workspace. This knowledge is workspace awareness, part of the glue that allows groups to collaborate effectively. In real-time groupware systems that provide a shared virtual workspace, the possibilities for interaction are impoverished when compared with physical workspaces, partly because support for workspace awareness has not generally been a priority in groupware design. In this paper, we present the concept of workspace awareness as one key to supporting the richness evident in face-to-face interaction. We construct a conceptual framework that describes the elements and mechanisms of workspace awareness, and then show several widgets that can be embedded in relaxed-WYSIWIS groupware systems to support the maintenance of workspace awareness.

Workstations and personal computers are increasingly being delivered with the ability to handle multimedia data; more and more of us are linked by high-speed digital networks. With multimedia communication environments becoming more commonplace, what have we learned from earlier experiences with prototype media environments? This paper reports on some of our experiences as developers, researchers and users of flexible, networked, multimedia computer environments, or "media spaces". It focusses on the lessons we can learn from extended, long-term use of media spaces, with connections that last not hours or days, but months or years. We take as our starting point a set of assumptions which differ from traditional analytical perspectives. In particular, we begin from the position that that a real-world baseline is not always an appropriate point of comparison for new media technologies; that a set of complex and intricate communicative behaviours arise over time; and that media spaces c...

This paper borrows ideas from social science to inform the design of novel "sensing" user-interfaces for computing technology. Specifically, we present five design challenges inspired by analysis of human-human communication that are mundanely addressed by traditional graphical user interface designs (GUIs). Although classic GUI conventions allow us to finesse these questions, recent research into innovative interaction techniques such as `Ubiquitous Computing' and `Tangible Interfaces' has begun to expose the interaction challenges and problems they pose. By making them explicit we open a discourse on how an approach similar to that used by social scientists in studying human-human interaction might inform the design of novel interaction mechanisms that can be used to handle human-computer communication accomplishments.

We report on a study (N=36) of user preferences for balancing awareness with privacy. Participants defined permissions for sharing of location, availability, calendar information and instant messaging (IM) activity within an application called mySpace. MySpace is an interactive visualization of the physical workplace that provides dynamic information about people, places and equipment. We found a significant preference for defining privacy permissions at the group level. While “family ” received high levels of awareness sharing, interestingly, “team ” was granted comparable levels during business hours at work. Surprisingly, presenting participants with a detailed list of all pieces of personal context to which the system had access, did not result in more conservative privacy settings. Although location was the most sensitive aspect of awareness, participants were comfortable disclosing room-level location information to their team members at work. Our findings suggest utilizing grouping mechanisms to balance privacy control with configuration burden, and argue for increased system transparency to build trust.

This paper describes an awareness tool called Tickertape. Tickertape is a lightweight, highly tailorable tool that provides an interface to a world of transient information via a single-line scrolling message window. We overview Tickertape, describing both its unidirectional and bidirectional message groups and its time-out feature. We then illustrate how it is being used within one organisation.

With the increasing ease and power of wmputer netsvorking technologies, many organisations me taking information which was previously managed and distributed on paper aud making it available electronically. Such shared information systems are the basis of much organisational collaboration, and electronic distribution holds great promise. However, a primary focus of such systems is on the ease of information retrieval. We believe that an equally important component is the problem of information interpretation, and that this inter-pretation is.@ded by a context which many electronic sys-tems do not fully acknowledge. We report on a study of two systems, one paper-based and one electronic, managing similar information within the same organisation. We descrike the ways in which informa-tion retrieved from these systems is interpreted subjectively by individuals, and point to some of the factors contributing to this interpretation. These factors, together making up the context of the information, an3 of critical importance in the design of successful electronic shared information systems.

Proxy Lady is a mobile system for informal, opportunistic face-to-face communication, running on a PDA equipped with a radio transceiver. "Opportunistic communication" is anticipated by one party but it only occurs when the parties happen to meet each other. Proxy Lady supports such communication by providing notifications about possible "candidates for interaction" in the environment. The user specifies "candidates for interaction" by associating "people" with an "information item" (currently an email or a task). When "candidates for interaction" enter the proximity of the user, Proxy Lady notifies and makes the "information item" accessible. According to our fieldwork, formative evaluation sessions, and a literature survey, "opportunistic communication" is an important type of communication that has not been supported previously. This paper describes the interface and use of Proxy Lady and the results from three formative evaluation sessions of the system.