Situated Interaction with Ambient Information: Facilitating Awareness and Communication in Ubiquitous Work Environments

In this paper, we introduce our approach as well as examples of realizations for situated interaction in the context of future work environments. These environments will be populated with a range of smart artefacts. The artefacts and their mutual interaction are designed to facilitate awareness and notification as well as informal communication. They constitute examples of our approach to develop future work environments going not only beyond traditional PC-based work places but also beyond electronic meeting rooms and roomware components previously developed by us. We address a range of spaces in office buildings including semi-public spaces, e.g., in the hallway, the foyer, and the cafeteria. The approach is not restricted to office buildings but can be extended to other types of buildings and spaces. It is part of our vision that we call “Cooperative Buildings”. The artefacts and the software were developed in the EU-funded “Disappearing Computer”project “Ambient Agoras: Dynamic Information Clouds in a Hybrid Worlds”.