Anyone who has ever used a computer in a multiple window environment
can come up with the same resounding complaint: "There is never enough
screen space." But, those people who work in the information
visualization domain of workspaces would phrase that complaint in a
slightly different way, and it would be one that complains that the
developers of computer environments don't take enough of an advantage
of the space that they have!
Not every user of a computer needs
the same design in their workspace, and this seems to be the lesson
that workspace information visualizers take to heart in development.
It seems that different sets
of people will require different ways to have their workspaces set up,
and so they require different solutions to the same kind of general
problem: how do I organize the workspace to get the most information
visually to the user?
The workspace visualization domain consists of two
types of classes: (1) attempting to get more windows on the screen in
an organized way and (2) attempting to modify the work environment with
new information. The first class does not try to add new
information to the workspace, but it tries to organize the workspace
to allow the user to see more things at once. Elastic Windows from the
University of Maryland and Pad++ from the University of New Mexico are
examples of this. The second class attempts to add new things
like virtual reality and/or virtual conferencing to put new types
of information on the screen, Concurrent Technologies Corporation's
Collaborative Computing and Multimedia Conferencing by Lucent
Technologies are examples of this.
Tasks
Enable users to view and interact with computer screen layouts in a more
efficient manner.
Allow geographically dispersed users to collaborate and interact concurrently.
Synthesize information, expertise, and results to create high quality solutions.
Organize, interact, and search task related information efficiently.
Allow rapid access and restructuring for task information.
Projects
Elastic Windows University of Maryland - Provides a hierarchical
window organization that allows for rapid multiple window management.
Multimedia Conferencing Lucent Technologies - Conferees can see a
simulated representatives of themselves at the conference which mimic
their actions.
WorkSpace (Project
site) Cornell University - WorkSpace is a three dimensional windowing
toolkit for virtual reality. This interface grew out of a desire to
transfer the ease of running multiple applications in a 2D computer
environment into the realm of 3D virtual reality (VR). Also available
is a more general overview of
WorkSpace
from the Cornell Theory Center.
Virtual Workbench
National Applied Software Engineering Center -
Virtual Workbench that enables users to view and interact with scenes
displayed on a workspace similar to a table top. 3-D scenes, contact
gloves and electromagnetic tracking devices are all used to make this
an immersive environment.
Collaborative Computing Concurrent Technologies Corporation -
Using immersive applications, people in
different locations can collaborate and interact simultaneously within the
same scenario while being visible to each other virtually.
Trestle Reference Manual Digital - A research project that
replicates a share of the workstation's screen, keyboard, and mouse.
Also available is tutorial which demonstrates the basic use of the
system (
Trestle Tutorial ).
Pad++ University of New
Mexico - Zoomable workspace
interface (AKA multiscale interfaces).
Personal
Role Managers University of Maryland - Multiple window coordination for
visual information access in high performance user interfaces.
Card, S.K., Robertson, G.G. and Makinlay, J.D. The Information
Visualizer: An information workspace. In: SIGCHI '91. Conference
Proceedings on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1991, pp. 181-188.
Henerson, D.A. and Card, S.K. Rooms: The use of multiple virtual
workspaces to reduce space contention in a window-based graphical user
interface. ACM Transactions Graph. 5, 3, (July 1986), pp.211-243.
Kuzuoka, Hideaki, Spatial workspace collaboration: a SharedView video
support system for remote collaboration capability, In: SIGCHI
'92. Conference Proceedings on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
pages 533-540.
to OLIVE.