Office central

Nicole Yankelovich, Mike Wessler, Jonathan Kaplan, Joe Provino, Nigel Simpson, Karl Haberl, Justin Matejka

January 2005 · Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Designing for User EXperience (DUX)

Abstract

Using Office Central, remote workers can "advertise" their presence in public spaces within offices, such as break areas, lounges or cafeterias. The design concept is to encourage informal, unplanned interactions between remote workers and those who pass through the public spaces. In this prototype installation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, we set up a lounge area with an Office Central picture window display (Figure 1). The local people in the lounge, wearing RFID tags for identification, could chat informally with remote people using a high-fidelity, CD-quality audio channel. The virtual meeting places included audio and video content, designed to be experienced jointly by the local and remote people. Some content was also tailored to the local people, updating as they approached the picture window display.

DOI PDF

Figures

Figure 1. Office Central picture window at the Computer History Museum installation. The screen in this kiosk-style application shows an “advertisement” for a remote person who is available to chat.

Figure 2. Storyboard sketches of an Office Central picture window in a corporate break area. The top image shows an advertisement for a person interested in talking about software. The bottom image sh

Figure 3. In the Office Central Lounge, the four RFID antennas are visible above the doorframe and above the Picture Window display.

Figure 4. As visitors enter the lounge, the antenna on the top left of the doorframe detects their presence. The one on the top right detects when someone leaves the space.

Figure 6. Ad for a virtual space. This one corresponds to the physical space of the same name. When remote people join, they will see video of the space.

Figure 7. Interacting in the virtual lounge. Nicole and Mike are standing in front of the picture window in the physical lounge, as seen by their photos in the person radar (bottom left). They are cha

Figure 9. The registration application associates RFID tag IDs with a person’s name and email address.

Figure 10. Picture-taking ad with camera and PowerMate.

Figure 12. Person ad. One press on the PowerMate initiates an audio connection with the person advertising.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.5555/1138235.1138295,
author = {Yankelovich, Nicole and Wessler, Mike and Kaplan, Jonathan and Provino, Joe and Simpson, Nigel and Haberl, Karl and Matejka, Justin},
title = {Office central},
year = {2005},
isbn = {159593250X},
publisher = {AIGA: American Institute of Graphic Arts},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {Using Office Central, remote workers can "advertise" their presence in public spaces within offices, such as break areas, lounges or cafeterias. The design concept is to encourage informal, unplanned interactions between remote workers and those who pass through the public spaces. In this prototype installation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, we set up a lounge area with an Office Central picture window display (Figure 1). The local people in the lounge, wearing RFID tags for identification, could chat informally with remote people using a high-fidelity, CD-quality audio channel. The virtual meeting places included audio and video content, designed to be experienced jointly by the local and remote people. Some content was also tailored to the local people, updating as they approached the picture window display.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Designing for User EXperience},
pages = {52–es},
keywords = {RFID, collaborative work, distance collaboration, high-fidelity audio, user experience},
location = {San Francisco, California, USA},
series = {DUX '05}
}