Table Of ContentComputer Supported Cooperative Work
011
011
011
Springer
London
011 Berlin
Heidelberg
New York
Hong Kong
Milan
Paris
11 Tokyo
i
Also in this series 1
2
Gerold Riempp Ralph Schroeder (Ed.) 3
Wide Area Workflow Management The Social Life of Avatars 4
3-540-7643-4 1-85233-461-4
5
Celia T. Romm and Fay Sudweeks (Eds) J.H. Erik Andriessen 6
Doing Business Electronically Working with Groupware 7
3-540-76159-4 1-85233-603-X
8
Fay Sudweeks and Celia T. Romm (Eds) Paul Kirschner, Chad Carr and 9
Doing Business on the Internet Simon Buckingham Shum (Eds) 1011
1-85233-030-9 Visualising Argumentation
1
1-85233-664-1
2
Elizabeth F. Churchill, David N. Snowdon
Christopher Lueg and Danyel Fisher (Eds) 3
and Alan J. Munro (Eds)
From Usenet to CoWebs 4
Collaborative Virtual Environments
1-85233-532-7
1-85233-244-1 5
Kristina Höök, David Benyon and 6
Christine Steeples and Chris Jones (Eds)
Alan J. Munro (Eds) 7
Networked Learning
Designing Information Spaces: The Social
1-85233-471-1 8
Navigation Approach
9
Barry Brown, Nicola Green and 1-85233-661-7
2011
Richard Harper (Eds)
Bjørn Erik Munkvold
1
Wireless World
Implementing Collaboration Technologies
1-85233-477-0 2
in Industry
3
Reza Hazemi and Stephen Hailes (Eds) 1-85233-418-5
4
The Digital University – Building a Learning
Community 5
1-85233-478-9 6
7
Elayne Coakes, Dianne Willis and
Steve Clark (Eds) 8
Knowledge Management in the 9
SocioTechnical World 3011
1-85233-441-X
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
4011
Related Title 1
Richard Harper (Ed.) 2
Inside the Smart Home 3
1-85233-688-9 4
5
A list of out of print titles is available at the end of the book 611
ii
David N. Snowdon, Elizabeth F. Churchill
and Emmanuel Frécon (Eds)
Inhabited Information
011
Spaces
Living with your Data
With 94 Figures
011
011
011
11
iii
David N. Snowdon, BSc (hons) MSc, PhD 1
Xerox Research Centre Europe, 6 Chemin de Maupertius, 38240 Meylan, France.
2
Elizabeth F. Churchill, BSc, MSc, PhD 3
FX Palo Alto Laboratory Inc., 3400 Hillview Avenue, Building. 4 Paol Alto, CA94110, USA. 4
5
Emmanuel Frécon, MSc
Swedish Insitute for Computer Science, Interactive Collaborative Environments 6
Laboratory, Platforms for Collaborative Environments Group, Box 1263, 164 29 Kista, 7
Sweden.
8
9
Series Editors 1011
Dan Diaper, PhD, MBCS 1
Professor of Systems Science & Engineering, School of Design, Engineering & Computing,
2
Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK
3
Colston Sanger
4
School of Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK
5
6
7
8
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
9
Inhabited information spaces : living with your data. –
2011
(Computer supported cooperative work)
1. Human-computer interaction 2. Interactive computer systems 1
I. Snowdon, David N., 1968– II. Churchill, Elizabeth F.,
2
1962– III. Frécon, Emmanuel
3
004′.019
ISBN 1852337281 4
5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
6
A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress
7
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
8
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced,
9
stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers,
or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the 3011
Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to
1
the publishers.
2
CSCW ISSN 1431-1496 3
ISBN 1-85233-728-1 Springer-Verlag London Berlin Heidelberg
4
Springer-Verlag is a part of Springer Science+Business Media
5
springeronline.com
6
© Springer-Verlag London Limited 2004
7
8
The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of
a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore 9
free for general use.
4011
1
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information
contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions 2
that may be made.
3
4
Typeset by Florence Production, Stoodleigh, Devon, England
Printed and bound in the United States of America 5
34/3830-543210 Printed on acid-free paper SPIN 10910238
611
iv
Foreword
The Human Touch: Reflections on i3
011
The Machine-centred Mind Set
At the Chicago World Fair of 1933, the official motto was: “Science Finds –
Industry Applies – Man Conforms”. To many of us today this seems quite shock-
ing, yet it has been the driving force of much development in the last century.
In particular, if you look at the rise of computing over the last 50 years, you
011 will see that, on the whole, development has been extraordinary, but fairly
straightforward: it can be characterised as trying to make “faster and faster
machines fit into smaller and smaller boxes”.
Starting from the time of the ENIAC, one of the colossal computers of the
1940s, most IT progress has been driven from the point of view of the machine.
Since then things have changed – but perhaps not really that much. Even if com-
puters can today calculate many times over what was possible a few years ago,
and the machines have become somewhat less obtrusive, much of the “mind
set” has stayed the same. It is the visions of huge calculating machines span-
ning massive rooms, trying to recreate an absolute artificial intelligence, that
011 still haunt much of the thinking of today.
Clearly, it is difficult to shake off old mind sets.
Alternatives
Alternatives to the idea of fitting computing into ever smaller boxes can
mainly be attributed to Mark Weiser. In his paper, “The Computer for the 21st
Century”, he outlined notions of how computing could become integrated into
the fabric of everyday life by becoming completely distributed into the envi-
011 ronment. In this way computing would become “ubiquitous”. More recently,
similarly inspired work on “tangible media”, by Hiroshi Ishii has emerged from
the MIT Media Lab. Apart from this, the technological revolution of GSM and
the mobile phone has also had its share of making information technology come
out of its “traditional shell”.
Alternatives to the machine-centred view to computing were also starting
11 around the same time, such as the “anthropocentric” ideas proposed by Mike
v
Foreword
Dertouzos at the MIT Computer Science Lab; and in a similar vein, cognitive 1
scientist, Don Norman has been pointing out the lack of well-designed infor- 2
mation environments. 3
Roughly at the same time, but from a different perspective, we started think- 4
ing about how to give technology more of a “human touch”. Now, in principle, 5
this should not be that difficult, as technology is after all, made by humans. In 6
practice, however, one has to go quite far to break down the machine-centred 7
and box-centred ways of thinking. 8
We decided that the only way to attack the problem with any significance 9
was to try to invert the picture completely – that is, to start thinking from the 1011
human point of view and work outwards. Our idea of “human centredness” was 1
that it should nurture technological innovation but within a broader context of 2
human values and aspirations. This was not the same as “user” driven, or 3
“defined by user needs”, all of which tend to become stuck in improving the 4
status quo, but not growing beyond it. At the same time, we also wanted to 5
make sure to break out of the box-centred ways of thinking as much as possible 6
and avoid doing “traditional HCI”, which was mainly involved in improving 7
computers as they were. 8
Our ideas were designed to balance questions of technically “how”, with ques- 9
tions of “why?” and “what for?”. And the aim was to see if we could start restor- 2011
ing the balance between people’s inventiveness to make new machines, with the 1
essence of being human. Our questions became rather: How can we reach a 2
better and more fulfilling balance between technology and people? What could 3
be new ways of thinking about the problems? What could be the new paradigms 4
that could lay the paths for further research and development? 5
6
7
3 8
The i Research Programme
9
3011
It is along these lines that we launched our first call for proposals back in 1995.
1
Our general aim was to look at the relationship between people and informa-
2
tion technology in the future: how could people access and use information,
3
and exchange things with others using information technology as a medium?
4
A clear break was needed to get out of stale thinking. Therefore, we called
5
for new paradigms of interaction and research on new interfaces between people
6
and the world of information. We also asked how such work could inter-
7
twine human, societal and technological elements into one dynamic research
8
activity. One of the main quotes from our call for proposals was:
9
The goal of i3 is to research and develop new human-centred interfaces for 4011
interacting with information, aimed at the broad population (1996). 1
2
To help define a specific research agenda, we first had a competition for 3
more specific visions of the future. “Connected Community” and “Inhabited 4
Information Spaces” were selected as the two visionary themes on which we 5
based a subsequent call for research projects. Even though it took some time 611
vi
Foreword
●1 ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
to have an extra layer of calls for proposals, in retrospect it was better to “reculer
pour mieux sauter”.
The two selected themes had similar yet contrasting underlying philosophies.
The Connected Community theme, proposed by a team headed by Irene Mac
William (Philips Design, Eindhoven) and Marco Susani (Domus Academy,
Milan) asked: forget about virtual environments and trying to fit people into
some artificial world – how can we help people in their everyday environment,
and integrate technology into this? The idea is to understand how information
and communication tools start making a difference when they are embedded
011 in a real context, and start being more meaningful for actual people and com-
munities. How can technology enhance these environments and activities,
rather than replace them?
The other schema, Inhabited Information, proposed by a team headed by
Tom Rodden (University of Nottingham) took a slightly different perspective.
It stated: the Internet and the Web already represent a suspended reality, and
people want to participate more in these spaces. Given that this is a reality, how
could it evolve in the future? How could we make it more accessible to the
broadest possible public, and make it socially interactive for large groups of
people, in meaningful ways? And in similar spirit to the first theme, how can
011 such environments link to the physical everyday world rather than be removed
from it?
At a later stage, we decided to supplement the research with an emphasis
on learning. We wanted to explore new relationships between learning and
technology. The idea was that a lot could be learnt about designing new inter-
faces by looking at how children interact, play and learn. Similar ideas had
been experimented in a Lego context by Seymore Papert of the MIT Media Lab.
In 1997, we decided to have a call on experimental school environments (ese).
This centred around learning for very young children, in fact, the 4–8-year-old
age range. This age range struck us as being particularly challenging because
011
at this stage children don’t have too many of the adult preconceptions of
the world, and are still open to new things. Young children have a different
kind of “language” – a form of communication and expression from which
adults can learn a lot. From this we wanted to gain insights about how to
design meaningful interaction tools for the population at large. The header of
our call was:
3
The aim of i -ese, is to research new kinds of IT-based tools designed to enable new
approaches to learning, focussing on the age range of 4 to 8 (1997).
011 From each of these programmes we selected a number of individual research
projects. Together these spanned many universities, research centres and com-
panies across Europe, and involved a mix of people from many walks of life –
artists, designers, computer scientists, game companies, technology companies,
experimental schools, teachers and children, people in communities, etc. At the
same time all these different outlooks were united by the common vision: of
11 exploring new relationships between people and technology.
vii
Foreword
1
Grains of the Future
2
3
In this book you will find some examples of work in particular from the
4
Inhabited Information Spaces Grouping. It is interesting to see how some of
5
these ideas are still “futuristic” and others have started to become part of main-
6
stream thinking and made their way into products.
7
Some people say that you can find “grains of the future” in the present today
8
– the only problem is, where do you start to look? One of the potential advan-
9
tages of this book is that by looking at the research developments stretching
1011
out into recent past, one can identify how some grains developed into trends
1
of the present, and other are still just emerging.
2
For those still interested in seeking out “grains of the future”, this book will
3
be a valuable source.
4
Jakub Wejchert
5
Information Society DG
6
European Commission
7
8
9
Jakub Wejchert grew up in Ireland, with a family background of artists and
2011
architects, of Polish origin. He studied natural science at Trinity College Dublin,
1
specialising in physics, and holds a doctorate (modelling of non-linear net-
2
works) from the same institution. Later he worked in the USA with IBM
3
research, working on computer graphics and interface design. He joined the
4
European Commission in 1992. At the Future and Emerging Technologies unit,
3 5
he set up and managed a number of research programmes such as i – intelli-
3 6
gent information interfaces; i – experimental school environments; and the
7
“disappearing computer”. He now works as an advisor on vision and strategy
8
to one of the Directors in the Information Society Programme. Jakub lives in
9
Waterloo, south of Brussels, with his wife and three sons.
3011
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily
1
reflect the position of the European Commission.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
4011
1
2
3
4
5
611
viii
Acknowledgements
011
The editors would like to acknowledge the European i3 initiative and all the
authors of the chapters in this volume for their contributions. Much of the work
described in this volume would not have taken place without funding from the
European Commission. We would also like to thank SICS, XRCE and FX Palo
Alto Laboratory for supporting our activities within this domain. Rosie Kemp
and Melanie Jackson of Springer also deserve thanks for their help and support
throughout the process of preparing this book for publication.
011
011
011
11
ix
Contents
011
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Part 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Inhabited Information Spaces: An Introduction
Elizabeth Churchill, David Snowdon and Emmanuel Frécon . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Chapters in this Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1 Pure Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
011
1.2.2 Mixed Reality Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.3 Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.4 Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.5 Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Part 2. Pure Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. WWW3D and the Web Planetarium
011 Mårten Stenius and David Snowdon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Producing a 3D Representation of a Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Browsing the Web Using WWW3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 Improving Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5 The Web Planetarium: Creating a Richer Visualisation . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.1 Visual Differentiation of Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.2 The Web as a Road Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.5.3 Hybrid Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
011
3. PlaceWorld, and the Evolution of Electronic Landscapes
Steve Pettifer, Jon Cook and James Marsh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 Background: The Physical and the Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2.1 Watching a Cityscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
11 3.2.2 The Distributed Legible City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
xi
