Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces Nitin Sawhney, Sean Wheeler and Chris Schmandt Speech Interface Group, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA Abstract: People wish to maintain a level of awareness of timely information, including presence of others in the workplace and other social settings. We believe this provides better exchange, coordination and contact within a community, especially as people work in asynchronous times and distributed locations. The challenge is to develop lightweight techniques for awareness, interaction and communication using shared information appliances. In this paper, we describe the design of an exploratory responsive display projected within a shared workspace at the MIT Media Lab. The system uses visual sensing to provide relevant information and constructs traces of people’s activity over time. Such aware portals may be deployed in casual workplace domains, distributed workgroups, and everyday public spaces. Keywords: Awareness; Groupware; Perceptual interfaces; Responsive media; Situated interaction 1. Situated Interaction in Transitional Spaces To understand the role of shared community appliances and interaction in a public context, we pose a number of questions that may suggest different design approaches. Such issues are encountered in everyday community appliances that purposely draw attention in public spaces, such as information kiosks in train stations or an electronic whiteboard in a meeting room. These appliances tend to be situated in the heart of an area, surrounded by peripheral and transitional spaces, which are typically highly frequented but under-utilised. We are interested in exploring means for enabling brief encounters with con- textually relevant information in such transi- tional spaces, as a means for enhanced awareness within a community. Why is information about context necessary within a community? One view is that information permits coordination and negotiation between community members, clarifying and democratis- ing their decisions. Another view is that it provides assurances about the social order and one’s role in the community. It allows one to stay in the loop. Hence transparent public access to situationally relevant information about the community is a desirable goal. The Portholes system [1] provided distributed awareness via periodic images of others, helping maintain a sense of community. Piazza [2] supported sponta- neous encounters based on shared tasks. We believe shared information in a community space may trigger richer interactions. Whose needs in the community should the system address? A community is held together partially by spatial proximity, established social orders, and a set shared interests and goals. The question of who belongs in a community could be broadly defined to include its current physical inhabi- tants, as well as on-line individuals and visitors who may engage in it briefly. Hence shared displays must allow others a level of access, while preserving community standards for privacy and anonymity if desired. When should a system in transitional space draw attention to itself? An information system that provides continuous alerts or requires active user engagement is distracting. Designing graceful shared systems that coexist with the environ- ment requires a means to detect when an appropriate interruption is meaningful, based on the context of its participants [3]. How does interface and modality affect transi- tional use of space? Many systems tend to utilise 66 # Springer-Verlag London Ltd Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (2001) 5:66–70