Situated information spaces and spatially aware palmtop computers

TLDR: The goal is to go a step further by grounding and situating the information in a physical context to provide additional understanding of the organization of the space and to improve user orientation.

Abstract: article in this issue) will further these abilities and cause the generation of short-range and global electronic information spaces to appear lhroughout our everyday environments. How will this information be organized, and how will we interact with it? Wherever possible, we should look for ways of associating electronic information with physical objects in our environment. This raeans that our information spaces will be 3D. The SemNet system [4] is an example of a tool that offers users access to large, complicated 3D information spaces. Our goal is to go a step further by grounding and situating the information in a physical context to provide additional understanding of the organization of the space and to improve user orientation. As an example of ubiquitous computing and situated information spaces, consider a fax machine. The electronic data associated with a fax machine should be collecl:ed, associated , and colocated with [he physical device (see Figure 1). This means that your personal electronic phone book, a log of your incoming and outgoing calls, and fax messages could be accessible by browsing a situated 3D electronic information space surrounding the fax machine. The information would be organized by the layout of the physical device. Incoming calls would be located near 1:he earpiece of the hand receiver while outgoing calls would be situated near the mouthpiece. The phone, book could be found near the keypad. A log of the outgoing fax messages would be found near the fax paper feeder while a log of the incoming faxes would be located at the paper dispenser tray. These logical information hot spots on the physical device can be moved and customized by users according to their personal organizations. The key idea is that the physical object anchors the information, provides a logical means of partitioning and organizing the associated information space, and serves as a retrieval cue for users. A major design requirement of situated information spaces is the ability for users to visualize, browse, and manipulate the 3D space using a ,.RoE.ALL-portable, palmtop computer. That is, instead of a large fixed display on a desk, we want a small, mobile display to act as a window onto the information space. Since the information spaces will consist of multimedia data, the display of the palmtop should be able to handle all forms of data including text, graphics, video, and audio. Moreover, the desire to merge the physical and …