Supporting Collaboration in a Context-Aware Office Computing Environment

Position Paper: Introduction Excerpt

Our research seeks to design an office that better supports knowledge workers-business professionals who interpret and transform information. Successful knowledge workers manage multiple tasks, collaborate effectively among several col-leagues and clients, and manipulate information that is most relevant to their current task by leveraging the spatial organization of their work area. The diversity of these work practices and the complexity of implementing flexible computing tools make it difficult to meet all the workers’ needs.

Reference

Voida, Stephen; Mynatt, Elizabeth D. and MacIntyre, Blair. “Supporting Collaboration in a Context-Aware Office Computing Environment.” A position paper for the workshop on Collaboration with Interactive Walls and tables at the 4th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2002). Gothenburg, Sweden

Integrating Virtual and Physical Context to Support Knowledge Workers

Abstract

The Kimura system augments and integrates independent tools into a pervasive computing system that monitors a users interactions with the computer, an electronic whiteboard, and a variety of networked peripheral devices and data sources.

Reference

Voida, Stephen; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; MacIntyre, Blair and Corso, Gregory M. “Integrating Virtual and Physical Context to Support Knowledge Workers.” In IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1(3):73-79, July-September 2002

Support For Multitasking and Background Awareness Using Interactive Peripheral Displays

Abstract

In this paper, we describe Kimura, an augmented office environment to support common multitasking practices. Previous systems, such as Rooms, limit users by constraining the interaction to the desktop monitor. In Kimura, we leverage interactive projected peripheral displays to support the perusal, manipulation and awareness of background activities. Furthermore, each activity is represented by a montage comprised of images from current and past interaction on the desktop. These montages help remind the user of past actions, and serve as a springboard for ambient context-aware reminders and notifications.

Reference

MacIntyre, Blair; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Voida, Stephen; Hansen, Klaus Marius; Tullio, Joe and Corso, Gregory M., “Support For Multitasking and Background Awareness Using Interactive Peripheral Displays.” In Proceedings of ACM UIST ’01 Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Orlando, Florida, USA, November 11-14), ACM Press, 41-50

Hypermedia in the Kimura System: Using Spatial, Temporal, and Navigational Relationships to Support Multitasking and Background Awareness

Abstract

The goal of the Kimura system is to augment traditional office computing environments in order to explore and evaluate the addition of visual peripheral displays to human-computer interfaces within an office environment. To do this, we employ multiple peripheral displays to display spatial, temporal, and navigational hypermedia relationships between users’ documents and context through desktop monitoring and context information gathering.

Reference

Hansen, Klaus Marius; MacIntyre, Blair; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Tullio, Joe and Voida, Steve. “Hypermedia in the Kimura System: Using Spatial, Temporal, and Navigational Relationships to Support Multitasking and Background Awareness.” Presented at ACM Hypertext 2001, Aarhus, Denmark. August 14-18, 2001

Automatic partitioning for prototyping ubiquitous computing applications

Abstract

One of the main challenges facing ubiquitous computing research and development is the difficulty of writing software for complex, heterogeneous distributed applications. In this paper, we evaluate automatic application partitioning as an approach to rapid prototyping of ubiquitous computing systems. Our approach allows developers to largely ignore distribution issues when developing their applications, by providing tools for generating distribution code automatically, under user guidance. We claim that automatic partitioning is promising for a large class of ubiquitous computing applications and discuss an example ubicomp application re-engineered using our approach.

Reference

Liogkas, N., MacIntyre, B., Mynatt E.D., Smaragdakis, Y., Tilevich, E. & Voida, S. (2004, July-September). Automatic partitioning for prototyping ubiquitous computing applications. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 3(3), 40-47.