OpenSpace : enhancing social awareness at the workplace

Social awareness in the workspace has been a classical architectural problem that has been tackled in various ways-ranging from architectural ways, such as the design of building atria, to technological ways, like connecting of two remote spaces using two-way audio-video tunnels. Any attempt at enhancing social awareness is fundamentally at odds with high levels of user privacy. In this document, we shall discuss a novel sensor network based approach to enhancing the social awareness of people while maintaining low levels of privacy invasiveness. We use a grid of motion sensors to collect anonymous information about activity in various locations of our prototypical workspace. The real time and historical components of the data are then visualized in six different ways. These visualizations are meant to be deployed as glanceable displays in public areas and personal workspaces to allow people to gain an almost subconscious awareness of the space around them. The system developed is evaluated through one on one critique interviews with users drawn randomly from the prototypical workspace. Finally the results of the evaluation are discussed and future directions for the research are outlined.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Kaur, Ishwinder

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Henry Holtzman.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39339
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39339

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39339