Ubiquitous Awareness of Cooperative Activities in a Theatre of Work

Awareness of the cooperative activities in a distributed team is essential for successful cooperation between different locations. Different approaches for the provision of this information exist, but most concentrate on the provision of awareness indications at the users desktop. The Theatre of Work collects activity information through a variety of software and hardware-sensors and distributes them through an Internet based event and notification infrastructure. The awareness indications are presented in a multi-user 3D environment. Users and their current actions on shared objects while using groupware applications are represented by avatars and their symbolic actions. Avatars of users who work in a similar context appear spatially close in the 3D environment. The integration of the Theatre of Work into the ambience of a work setting through ambient displays and ambient indicators presents an example for the application of pervasive computing to support distributed cooperative activities. It opens new opportunities for spontaneous encounters and spontaneous contacts in distributed teams.

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