Distributed organizations, with distributed cooperative work,
are a fact of life. How can new technologies help? Distributed
video is an appealing choice, carrying more contextual information
than voice alone and, arguably, better at conveying subtle cues,
such as the emotional states. Although new commercial systems
are being introduced, they focus primarily on providing new technology.
Most are based on relatively simple extensions of two existing
models of communication: formal meetings become videoconferences
and telephones become videophones. However, research in computer-supported
cooperative work has tried to emphasize the user, with models
based on Shared Workspaces (to support shared work on a common
task), Coordinated Communication (to support structured communication
to serve a specified purpose), and Informal Interaction (to support
informal, unplanned and unstructured interactions). Although mediaspaces
can incorporate all three, they emphasize informal communication,
providing people working together at a distance with interactions
that they take for granted when they are co-located. This chapter
describes some of the pioneering work in media spaces, with more
detailed descriptions of our own work at Rank Xerox EuroPARC (RAVE
for our own use in the laboratory and WAVE, to support engineers
working collaboratively between facilities in England and the
Netherlands), concluding with a discussion of the technical, user
interface and social issues involved in designing media spaces.
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