ACTIVE MAP: A Visualization Tool for Location Awareness to Support Informal Interactions

ACTIVEMAP is a visualization tool that enables users to gain greater awareness of the location of people in their workplace environment, increasing each person's ability to seek out colleagues for informal, face-to-face interactions. Our initial implementation of the tool places images of each person's face on a map of the building. We have explored variations on how to best represent a range of features: the "freshness" of location information, groups of people in a single office, and the movement of people throughout the environment. We describe the context of the environment in which the tool is used, the features embodied in this tool, variations we have implemented for representing location and movement information, and some potential extensions for future versions of the tool.

[1]  A. Harter,et al.  A distributed location system for the active office , 1994, IEEE Network.

[2]  Sara A. Bly,et al.  Media spaces: bringing people together in a video, audio, and computing environment , 1993, CACM.

[3]  Andy Hopper,et al.  The active badge location system , 1992, TOIS.

[4]  Joseph F. McCarthy,et al.  EVENTMANAGER: Support for the Peripheral Awareness of Events , 2000, HUC.

[5]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Portholes: supporting awareness in a distributed work group , 1992, CHI.

[6]  Bill N. Schilit,et al.  Disseminating active map information to mobile hosts , 1994, IEEE Network.

[7]  M. Weiser,et al.  THE COMING AGE OF CALM TECHNOLOGY[1] , 1996 .

[8]  Edward L. Robertson,et al.  Techniques for non-linear magnification transformations , 1996, Proceedings IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization '96.

[9]  Toru Ishida,et al.  FreeWalk: supporting casual meetings in a network , 1996, International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

[10]  John C. Tang,et al.  Supporting distributed groups with a Montage of lightweight interactions , 1994, CSCW '94.

[11]  Scott E. Hudson,et al.  Techniques for addressing fundamental privacy and disruption tradeoffs in awareness support systems , 1996, CSCW '96.

[12]  Marvin Theimer,et al.  Providing location information in a ubiquitous computing environment (panel session) , 1994, SOSP '93.

[13]  Andreas Girgensohn,et al.  NYNEX portholes: initial user reactions and redesign implications , 1997, GROUP.

[14]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces , 1992, CSCW '92.

[15]  Richard Harper,et al.  Looking at ourselves: an examination of the social organisation of two research laboratories , 1992, CSCW '92.

[16]  Mike Spreitzer,et al.  Providing Location Information in a Ubiquitous Computing Environment , 1994, Mobidata.

[17]  Ronald E. Rice,et al.  Video as a technology for informal communication , 1993, CACM.