'This All Together, Hon?' Ubicomp in Non-office Work Environments

Ubiquitous computing technologies offer the promise of extending the benefits of computing to workers who do not spend their time at a desktop environment. In this paper, we review the results of an extended study of nonoffice workers across a variety of work domains, noting some key characteristics of their practices and environments, and examining some challenges to delivering on the ubicomp promise. Our research points to three important challenges that must be addressed, these include: (a) variability across work environments; (b) the need to align disparate, sometimes conflicting interests; and (c) the need to deal with what appear to be informal ways of creating and sharing knowledge. As will be discussed, while daunting, these challenges also point to specific areas of focus that might benefit the design and development of future ubicomp systems.