CHI 98 l l 8-23
APRIL
1998
ACM
ISBN l-581
LATE-BRFMC
13-028-7
RESULTS
Integrated Design of Real Architectural Spaces and Virtual Information Spaces Norbert A. Streitz GMD - German National Research Center for Information Technology IPSI - Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute DolivostraBe 15 D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany +49-(0)6151-869-919
[email protected] ABSTRACT
This paper presents an introduction to the Suite “Integrated design of real architectural spaces and virtual information spaces”. It discusses the affordances of architectural spaces serving as information spaces and vice versa. As a consequence, it argues for a two-way augmentation of these two worlds were are living in. It concludes with an overview of the papers of this Suite. Keywords
augmented reality, physical space, architecture, virtual space, ambient information, workspace design INTRODUCTION
Physical objects in the - assumedly existing - real, architectural space around us acquire meaning or semantics as “information objects” by means of mappings to elements of conceptual spaces and/or mental models providing representations of the world we live in. The physical environment provides us permanently with information necessary to make decisions on what happened and what to do next. Thus, creation, communication, and usage of information is very much related to objects and events in the physical environment. With the advent of information technology there is an increasing shift to a situation where information is being created, stored and communicated as bits and bytes by means of computers resulting in virtual worlds as the place of information. As a consequence, interfaces to information are being reduced to displays of desktop computers. It is beyond the scope of this overview to explore the wide range of philosophical and psychological implications of the resulting dichotomy and coexistence of the real, physical, architectural space and the virtual, digital information space or cyberspace. We will concentrate on selected aspects relevant as a context for the following set of papers of this Suite.
ARCHITECTURAL AS INFORMATION
SPACES SPACES
Our day-to-day living and working environments are highly determined by the architectural space constituted by buildings with rooms, walls, floors, ceilings, doors, windows, furniture, etc. At the same time, they constitute rich information spaces due to their inherent affordances either as concrete and direct information sources or by providing ambient peripheral information which people tend not to focus on all the time but still process in the background [l]. For example, walking through an office building, there are plenty of opportunities and places “to find information”. From an ideal point of view, every object provides information about itself but also about the aggregate of which it is part of, about other objects and people who were there before, passed by, etc. One can distinguish several aspects of how and where the information is provided. One aspect is the physical layout of the workplace in an office or a meeting room and how it is embedded in the overall architectural environment The positioning of desks, chairs, tables, shelves, etc. in offices are examples. The ease of forming subgroups of a team working in a meeting room is very much dependent on the flexibility of the furniture and the access to information devices. Another aspect is the range of available options to provide information via or in relation to the physical objects in the architectural space. This includes books, magazines, memos on tables and desks, black or white boards and bulletin boards, maps, calendars on walls or doors, etc. The placement of “information objects” in relation to other physical objects in the architectural space depends on various characteristics. One of it being the size/ area necessary to display the complete information. Another is the necessity of more or less permanent visual access as, e.g., a calendar showing all days of the year/ a month or a large construction drawing pinned to a wall vs. on-demand access of detail information “hidden” in a book but “always available” if necessary. A third aspect is the range of possibilities to express relationships between information objects, e.g., by clustering corresponding physical objects (containing information). An example is a
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pile of selected books with information relevant to a specific problem. Office workers develop - sometimes very idiosyncratic behavior of arranging papers, books, etc. on desks, tables, chairs, window-sills, etc. A fourth aspect is the ambient information “floating around” in the architectural space - as acoustic or visual information or based on other senses like smell - providing important background and context cues, e.g., about the activities of people in the neighborhood [ 11. It has to be noted that the sole existence of information provided by the physical environment - in a direct or in an ambient way - might not be sufficient. It is usually isolated and not available in a format already integrated with other sources of information. Therefore, it is necessary that the human has to further process this information for decision making and subsequent behavior. This integration problem has also to be addressed when dealing with the augmentation of physical space with information available in the virtual space. ARCHITECTURAL SPACES AUGMENTED BY INFORMATION
SPACES
With the advent of information technology and the spread of desktop computers in offices, the situation changed dramatically. While some of the physical devices as, e.g., calendars and maps are still hanging on the walls (at least in some offices), the monitor of the desktop computer became the primary, almost “holy” entrance to up-to-date information. There is a tendency that information is now or will be more or less exclusively available only via the computer. At the same time, the desktop computer turned out to be a bottleneck - either because of limitations of having parallel access to different sources and types of information and because of limited screen space resulting in sometimes complex handling of windows. Although the desktop computer is of central importance it is still a “minority” with respect to the overall design of the workplace. Besides adjusting desks and tables so that they can accommodate large monitors and arranging for appropriate lighting (to reduce reflections), not too much happened in order to account for the new situation. There are some exceptions, though. One example is the spread of electronic meeting rooms. They are provided with different variations of IT: computer-controlled public displays (passive or interactive whiteboards), networked computers placed on top or mounted into the meeting room table, and, of course, combinations of networked computers and interactive whiteboards. While they constitute some progress, these rooms often lack an integrated design with the architectural space and the desired flexibility and mobility. These requirements are better met by other proposals, e.g., Ubiquitous Computing [4], Tangible Bits [l], and by a new approach called “Cooperative Buildings” [2]. More examples are described in the context of this Suite [3].
DESIGNING
FOR TWO-WAY
AUGMENTATION
It is obvious to us that physical objects and their placement in the architectural space provide valuable “affordances” for organizing content information and meta information for the work process of individuals as well as for groups. On the other hand, the physical environment has to be complemented and augmented by the abundant richness of information available in digital information spaces. In some cases, this requires to present this “invisible” information via (dynamic) physical objects in correspondence with the (changing) underlying digital information. There are many ways to approach this overall design goal. This Suite addresses the issues of how to do this in an integrated fashion and provides some examples. OVERVIEW
OF SUITE CONTRIBUTIONS
This Suite of late-breaking results is organized as follows. Following this overview, there are six results papers, a state-of-the-art summary and a paper outlining directions of future work. The papers are: Water Lamp and Pinwheels: Ambient Projection of Digital Information into Architectural Space. A. Dahley, C. Wisneski, H. Ishii (MIT Media Lab, USA) “Roomware”: Buildings Blocks for the Design of Flexible and Dynamic Cooperation Landscapes. N. Streitz, J. GeiBler (GMD-IPSI, Darmstadt, Germany) Shuffle, Throw or Take it ! Working Efficiently with an Interactive Wall. J. GeiBler (GMD-IPSI, Germany) Communication Chairs: Examples of Mobile Roomware Components. C. Miiller-Tomfelde (GMD-IPSI, Germany), W. Reischl (Darmstadt School of Design, Germany) The Dwelling as a Place for Communication. S. Junestrand, K.Tollmar (KTH, Stockholm Sweden) Adding Another Communication Channel to Reality: An a Chat-Augmented Conference Experience with J.Rekimoto (Sony CSL, Japan), Y. Ayatsuka (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan), H. Uoi (Osaka University, Japan), T. Arai (Hitachi Ltd., Japan) Basics of Integrated Information and Physical Spaces: The State of the Art. N. Streitz (GMD-IPSI, Germany), D. Russell (Xerox PARC, USA) The Future of Integrated Design of Ubiquitous Computing in Combined Real and Virtual Worlds. D. Russell, M. Weiser (Xerox PARC, USA) REFERENCES
1.
Ishii, H., Ulmer, B. (1997). Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. Proceedings of CHI’97, ACM Press.pp. 234-241. 2. Streitz, N. (Ed.), Proceedings International Workshop on Cooperative Buildings (CoBuild’98). Springer, LNCS. 3. Streitz, N., Russell, D. (1998). Basics of integrated information and physical spaces: The state of the art. Proceedings of CH1’98 (in this Suite). 4. Weiser, M. (1991). The Computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American, 199 1, 265 (3), pp.94-104.
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