Balancing Awareness and Privacy in a Video Media Space Using Distortion Filtration

Collaboration among distributed workgroup members is hampered by the lack of good tools to support informal interactions. These tools either fail to provide teleawareness or enable smooth transitions into and out of informal interactions. Video media spaces—always-on video links—have been proposed as a solution to this problem. However, the “always-on” nature of video media spaces results in a conflict between the desire to provide awareness and the need to preserve privacy. The present study examines distortion filtration applied to always-on video as means of resolving this tension. Our discussions include the inter-related concepts of informal interactions, awareness, and privacy; and the treatment afforded by existing distributed collaboration support tools. We then outline the present study, where our goal is to understand the effect of distortion filtration on awareness and privacy.