Augmenting cooperative settings by shared awareness spaces

The provision of awareness on the status of cooperative work is an essential prerequisite for the successful application of groupware systems. This paper describes NESSIE, an application-independent awareness infrastructure that is based on Internet technologies. After outlining the system architecture, we illustrate how different presentation methods can be used to enhance a user's physical working environment by awareness displays. Special attention is paid to the integration of NESSIE with a multi-user 3D environment to create shared awareness spaces. These spaces illustrate the activities of a cooperative environment in a symbolic way to provide a quick and intuitive impression of the current workgroup's situation to the user.