ABSTRAKT

This paper summaries our studies of public media spaces. The reasons for utilizing public social places can be derived from a hypothesis that individuals are empowered - even when working apart - by opportunities for light informal interaction. The re-use of social places for video-communication is examined through a set of full-scale prototypes that were used and assessed over extensive periods of time. The informal observations and reflection in design of these places have been supplemented by formal studies. We found that great care needs to be taken when designing these places from an architectural point of view. For some of the places, we would like to suggest using architectural features when altering the room rather than technology. In other settings, media altering might be more efficient.Keywords Video communication, Mediaspaces, Communities, Social places, Architecture, CSCW.

INTRODUCTION

The VideoCafé project started from an idea for virtually connected public places in two research labs that were about to initiate a collaborative research program. The idea of providing a public mediaspace was built on the assumption that such a space could facilitate informal community building. This will empowering the individuals with a sense of being able to take an active part in the discussion and hence also being able to make a difference to future plans and activities.

Even if similar scenarios have been envisioned, and studied, in related projects at Xerox Parc, [1] as well as Bellcore [2], our ambition has been to focus particularly on how to reuse social places within a workplace to create new means and opportunities of communication.

The key point here is our experience from building a total of seven different locations and constellations of mediaspace installations integrated into public environments. Our main objective has been to develop the VideoCafé so it could connect people over distance at places that are suitable for social (and work) related conversations.

Technically the VideoCafé is a rather simple but (very) high quality videoconferencing system that continuously links the two labs with audio and video. The main push has been to make this advanced technology as transparent as possible.

Previous research has indicated that the most important workplace interactions are not formal group meetings. Informal workplace interactions support a wide number of different functions such as the execution of work-related tasks, the co-ordination of group activity, the transmission of office culture, and social functions such as team building [3][4]. These interactions occur spontaneously, as informal communication for short periods of time, most often at semi-public places within workplaces.

Our aims with such a project have been to understand:

• How to use knowledge in architecture and interior design to integrate the virtual and physical spaces and places.
• How the high quality audio could be integrated and used in mediaspace installations.
• And finally, to evaluate how these perceptions influence informal and spontaneous interactions within this medium

RELATED WORK

Within the area of CSCW research, the importance of a medium that could support informal communication has been debated for a long time. It has been suggested that face-to-face meetings give more opportunity to be more informal (spontaneous, non-planned or temporal) than any other form of communication. Kraut [4] concluded using observational methods that informal communication tends to be highly frequent, above 85% of all interactions, in an R&D environment. More than 50% of the conversations were also unplanned.

Mediaspace is the term coined by Robert Stults at Xerox Parc to label some electronic media, like video communication, that has the property of altering and augmenting physical space. The importance of the Palo Alto - Portland mediaspace was that it provided an opportunity for communication that would not otherwise be possible without being there and that the support extended beyond communication on the explicit content of work tasks. This is what made the mediaspace a sustainer of working relationships [1].

THE REFLECTIVE DESIGN METHOD

In our study, to date we have set up seven different prototypes of the VideoCafé environment. Each setting has been evaluated by being put into practical use for several months. As part of the iterative design, we continuously observed the daily usage of the VideoCafé and then reflected our observations in the next set-up. For the informal evaluation we have collected anecdotes and viewpoints about the system. These have often come up during informal group discussions. These informal evaluations have been supplemented by formal evaluations, asking how the VideoCafé has affected the pattern of relationships and communications among the people at both labs. The reflective design of the VideoCafé environment has given us the possibility to collect and store experience which we implemented later in our next generation of prototypes.

Based on different kinds of situations, a couple of basic metaphors for social locations have then been deployed through the different prototypes of the VideoCafé installations. As illustrated above, the VideoCafé uses architectural metaphors in its manifestation - social places of different kinds.

To explore the feasibility of these metaphors we have designed new types of social places in workplaces that have incorporated mediaspace technology. In these places the integration of the physical social place and virtual mediaspace has been one of our main objectives. A more elaborate description of these places could be found in the following "room design" chapter.

From the set-up of the first prototype to the current ones, studies related to the usage of such a medium have been carried out. Techniques such as interviews, observations and sociograms allowed us to collect a set of data including daily usage patterns between the two research labs and users¹ feedback and attitudes.

RESULTS

We used HQ media to afford a better sense of the physical space in the remote place. The audio channels provided sound localisation so that the speaker¹s voice appears to originate from the location of the speaker¹s image. The same applied to the field of view, which was done mainly to obtain a better feeling for the physical environment of the remote place. The user could select from multiple camera views and remotely control the cameras. From our experience, we would like to argue that it is possible to design this kind of high performance arrangement without being too enveloping and hence disturbing the local social qualities that are needed to make these places attractive. In our findings, the increased proximity between the places has been the key to the success or failure in supporting informal communication.

We would like finally to argue here for the importance of bringing in competence and experience from architecture and interior design to create physical and virtual spaces and places for distributed community-building. The architecture and interior design of these places should reflect the type of communication they are intended for. It is these subtleties in the integration that will shape or not shape the media space between offices, lunchrooms, lobbies and public bars.

DISCUSSION

It has recently been debated if, and how, media spaces are truly useful in the support of informal communication. One of the conclusions could be that media spaces are difficult to learn and use in appropriate ways. It has been argued that it is easy to find the system useful for peers who know each other well, but it has also been observed that creating new contacts seems unusual in this context - it is hard to meet new people in a media space. If so, only one dimension of informal communication is supported through a media space.

We initiated the project believing that the VideoCafé would promote informal personal contacts between people at both the labs and in time could foster a community of interest. After the study, we can see that there have been a lot of new contacts on a personal as well as on a more superficial level. However, these contacts have developed through a need for such contacts and by personal links. The VideoCafé has been used as a tool for some of these new contacts but it is still unclear how many would have occurred even without the VideoCafé. What is unquestionable is that almost everyone liked the VideoCafé setting, in the sense that it was a highly appreciated component of the social, as well as the communicational, environment.

REFERENCES

1. Bly S., Harrison S. and Irwin S., "Media Spaces: Bringing People Together in a Video, Audio and Computing Environment", Communications of the ACM, 36(1), January 1993.
2. Fish R., Kraut R. and Chalfonte B., "The VideoWindow System in Informal Communication", in Proceedings. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work CSCW'90, Los Angeles, Ca., October 1990.
3. Katz, D., Kahn, R. L., "The Social Psychology of Organizations". New York: By John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1978.
4. Kraut, R. E., Egido, C. and Galegher J. Patterns of Contact and Communication in Scientific Research Collaborations. In Intellectual Teamwork, Galegher, J. and Kraut, R. E. (Eds.), Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., 1990.