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Weakly Augmented Reality: observing and designing thework-place of creative designers

Giorgio De Michelis*^, Flavio De Paoli*, Costanza Pluchinotta^, Marco Susani°1

1 *DISCO, University of Milano – Bicocca, Via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi 8, 20126 Milano, Italy [[email protected]]

^IRSO, Piazza Giovine Italia 3, 20123 Milano, Italy [demichelis, [email protected]]

°DARC, Domus Academy, Via Savona 97, 20144 Milano, Italy [[email protected]]

ABSTRACT

In this paper we distinguish between two spatially

oriented system design paradigms: weak and strong

augmented reality. The weak augmented reality

paradigm is then applied in the design of a system

supporting co-operation and knowledge creation within

a design centre. The system has been designed on the

hints we got from two subsequent ethnographies of the

work practice of creative designers. Since the design

centre moved to a new location between our two sets of

observations, we clearly focused our attention on the

impact that space arrangements had on the practice of

its members. The comparison between the two settings

in terms of layout, ICT equipment, changes occurred in

the practices and attitudes of the designers throughout

these years, lead us to design a collaborative

environment weakly augmenting the place where

designers are working.

Keywords

Augmented reality, knowledge management systems,

creative design, spatial arrangements.

INTRODUCTION

The space metaphor not only provides a means for

analysing and designing the practices of human beings but also creates the language through which they speak

about their lives. Proximity and distance, being or not

being there, drawing near and moving away are factors

which allow us to characterise the relations binding

different people while they are involved in a common

practice, for they are used by those people while

operating together. In human life a space «is invested

with understandings of behavioural appropriateness,

cultural expectations, and so forth» [10], characterising

the practice of the people living in it, transforming itself

into a place. In short, the space metaphor originates

from the basic fact that we live in a space; but it is kept

alive by our capability to use it as the framework for

giving sense to that space on the basis of our practice.

The growing presence of Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) in any type of place

has changed the way people understand and operate

within them [7] and therefore the way people live and

experience the spatial metaphor. Adopting Harrison and

Dourish’ conceptual framework, we can say that

information and communication technology transforms

the places where we spend our lives, extending them

beyond the limits of the portions of physical space,

which host them. Let us recall some examples that offer

hints of the directions that this concept may follow.

When people initiate an email message writing «Hi… ,»

instead of «Dear…,» they say, within an asynchronous

communication medium, what they would say when

meeting face to face, as if the velocity of email could

create a ‘virtual’ common space where the sender is

right there with the recipient while communicating.

Dourish et al. [8], reporting on experiments carried on

at Xerox Research Labs., observe that if the physical

space is reconfigured taking into account the presence

of an audio and video channel, then it happens that

people change their behaviour taking into account the

transformation of the place. First of all, visitors entering

an office begin their interaction greeting not only itsinhabitant but also her remote partner, who is «present»

through the audio and video link. Moreover, since the

office has been rearranged in such a way that the remote

partner could see its screen, she too is behaving as if

she and the office inhabitant lived in the same place.

The Olivetti Research Laboratory at Cambridge

University in UK (currently continuing its activity as

ATT Research Laboratory) has created a good example

of an environment that is enriched by ICT in the

Computing Department of the same University [21].

Both members and visitors are equipped with active

badges that send signals to sensors distributed inoffices, meeting rooms and corridors activating a large

variety of services for its users. Some examples should

be sufficient: doors open in front of an authoris ed

incoming person; the computer screen is obscured when

its owner is out of her room; lights are automatically

switched off when the room is empty; personal phone

numbers make the nearest telephone ringing when the

person is called; a list containing the places where

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people are located is updated continuously, saying e.g.

registering that the person who left the Lab were last

seen in front of the elevator.

These can be considered as examples of different ways

of how ICT changes the space perception and

understanding of human beings. While the email

example shows how a communication medium induces

the users to behave (to speak) as if they were in acommon virtual place, thus enriching the physical

locations where they are situated, the second one shows

how video and audio links can draw two different

physical locations so close to each other, that they

appear as (parts of) a unique place. The lastly third

example shows how enriching a physical location with

ICT can transform it into a place whose features change

in order to react to the behaviour of the human beings

operating in it.

All these examples can be considered as examples of

augmented reality [15, 22, 23], since they are not

aiming to create a virtual counterpart of the physical

space [2, 17] where people act and interact, but enrich

the physical locations where they live so that their place

goes far beyond the limits of the physical reality [16].

While Wendy Mackay describes three strategies for

augmenting reality focusing, respectively, on users,

physical objects and the environment surrounding both

users and objects [15], we adopt an orthogonal

viewpoint, characteris ing within it two paradigms: let

us call them strong and weak augmented reality.

The strong augmented reality paradigm aims to change

the space perception of its inhabitants so that they

cannot distinguish the physical base of their place from

its virtual extension. When a person working with a

dangerous material is allowed to handle it without

directly touching it, the quality of the system depends

on its capability to allow the user to perceive the remote

dangerous material as if it were directly in her hands.

The weak augmented reality paradigm aims to induce

people to behave as if their place were transformed

even if the physical space where they are located does

not seem changed. The email system does not change

the physical space in any sense; audio and video links

that you can hear and see through a window on a

workstation do not significantly change the space where

the workstation is situated; even the ubiquitous

computing extensions of the Olivetti Research

Laboratory at Cambridge University do not change the

space where they are located, they only enrich their

behavioural properties.

We must underline at this point that there is no clear-cut

distinction between weak and strong augmented reality:

strong augmented reality applications frequently

enhance their users feeling of being in a different place.

As a matter of fact, the three examples we have grouped

within the weak paradigm can be distinguished from the

strong paradigm viewpoint: from email that does not in

any way affect user perception, to the audio and video

links and active badges and sensors which, on the

contrary, create more realistic representations of the

augmented place.

Weak augmented reality paradigm is important in that it

offers a perspective for evaluating and designing ICT

applications from the spatial metaphor viewpoint

whether they are aiming to change the space perception

of their users or not. While weakly augmented reality

can create new places, even without inventing newdevices or changing existing objects, it offers a

viewpoint for evaluating strong augmented reality

systems, allowing to understand their usability and their

effectiveness above and beyond technical feasibility.

In this paper we present an application of the weak

augmented reality paradigm. We were lucky enough to

have had the possibility of observing a design centre

twice (in 1996 and 1999), before and after it underwent

its major changes: a new location, an increase in the

number of the employed designers and of the ongoing

projects, an improvement of the technology in use.

Giorgio De Michelis carried on the first observation

together with Edmundo Leiva Lobos and Eliana

Covarrubias [5, 14] within the Desarte project [20],

while the second he carried on together with Costanza

Pluchinotta as part of the Klee&Co Project [6]. Marco

Susani, director of the design centre under observation,

participated in both the observations as an active user.

Flavio De Paoli is responsible for the system to be

designed and developed for the design centre within the

Klee&Co project.

Evaluation of the two work settings allows us to design

the system we are developing as a means of augmenting

the design centre workplace so that it combines the

good points of both previous and more recent work

settings, while avoiding the weaknesses of each. In

analysing and designing the system, therefore, the space

dimension plays a major role, even if we are neither

creating new devices nor deeply transforming existing

objects. This will become clear in the following

sections of our paper.

The next section reports on the findings of the

observations of the two workplaces. Later, we describe

how the current work-space of the observed design

centre can be augmented without making use of

sophisticated technologies, but by trying to deeply

modify the behaviour of its inhabitants and visitors.

Then, the reader will find a section outlining the system

we are designing and developing to fulfil the

requirements established in the previous section. The

conclusion comes back to the augmented reality

paradigms to indicate some future directions for our

research.

OBSERVING DOMUS ACADEMY TWICE

Domus Academy (DA) was established in 1983 as a

private Italian Education Institution dealing with

innovation in Industrial Design. Some years later a

Research Center (DARC) was created in order to

support educational activities and to explore the most

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innovative design themes from a practical viewpoint.

Currently DARC is involved in both consultancy

projects and research projects. We had the occasion to

make ‘ethnographic’ observations of DARC work

practice twice in the last four years, once in 1996,

within the EC funded Desarte Project, and later in 1999

within the EC funded Klee&Co Project. Within

Desarte, one of the authors conducted a feasibility study

together with Edmundo Leiva Lobos and ElianaCovarrubias Gatica [14] . The aim was to analyse the

need for a co-operation support system on the part of

creative people (within the same project other groups

made similar observations on architects, landscape

architects and software designers [20]). As a follow up

to Desarte, a new project named Klee&Co was set up

and funded by the EC with the aim of designing and

developing the co-operation support system for

industrial designers outlined in Desarte. There are two

user organisations in Klee&Co: Domus Academy and

Philips Design. In order to update the knowledge on the

work practice at DARC and to better define the

requirements for the system to be designed, it was

necessary to repeat the ethnographic observation at

DARC. The intention was to focus the system on

supporting its informal learning process mediated by

"knowledge of experience".

Our ‘ethnographic’ observation was part of a design

process [11, 18]. It focused on the spatial dimension of

the work setting and on its influence on the practice of

the designers’ community [3, 13, 24] as well as on the

way people interact within and across project teams and

with external visitors and customers [5, 14].

The fact that between 1996 and 1999 the situation at

DARC experienced major changes (Domus Academy

moved to a new larger location; DARC had a

extraordinary growth becoming deeply involved in

interaction design projects; ICT became widely diffused

within DARC so that each designer had a networked

workstation) gave us the opportunity of using the

knowledge about the transformation of the workspace

in analysing and evaluating its current performances.

Let us outline our findings.

DA’s organisation of space in 1996

In 1996 DA operated on the top floor of a building

outside Milan. The space where all educationalactivities were performed was physically adjacent to the

DARC open space. The two places were decorated with

pictures, sketches and artefacts produced and chosen,

respectively, during education working sessions and

student thesis work on the education space side and

2 We put the word between single quotation marks,

since we do not use a standard ethnographic

observation style, since on the one hand our

observation sought to contribute to the process of

designing a cooperation support system for the

observed organization respecting its strict timing andon the other we involved the observed community of

practice in an action learning process so that the latter could fully participate in the design process

during design and/or research projects on the DARC

side.

The contiguity of the two spaces enhanced

communication among students and researchers about

what was going on in both environments. As a matter of

fact, there was a close exchange between the two parts:

students felt free to visit the DARC, asking about the

pictures and sketches hanging up all around and aboutthe projects they were related to, similarly, researchers

passing through the educational space to reach their

workplace were used to poking their nose into the

artefacts produced by the students, offering suggestions

and asking for more information.

The DARC open space was divided into sub-areas for

each ongoing project (see figure 1) so that all the

designers co-operating on a project had a common work

place. This space organisation had two main features.

Figure 1 - The DA Research Centre in 1996: a “per

project” organisation of space.

First, its walls (and cabinet doors) were fully decorated

with photographs and drawings contributing to inspire

the creative design process of the project (see figure 2).

These highly evocative pictures captured the attention

of both occasional visitors – designers, students, etc. –

and the DARC designers involved in other projects,

thus provoking conversations with members of the

design teams about what they were doing.

Conversing about the work they were engaged in, they

both improved their ability to describe and explain their

work and had the occasion to get new ideas and hear

outside opinions. Conversations triggered, moreover,

cross-fertilisation, exchange of viewpoints, and

enhanced awareness about what was going on in the

Research Centre.

Secondly, graphic workstations, scanners, office tools,

etc. were placed on the hot desk of each project (so

called because that’s where the work is really going on)

and in the graphic design section of the DARC, since all

project teams shared the technological support systems

and no designer had a personal workstation. Computers

did not play the major role in the creative process;

rather they were used mostly for creating the project

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Figure 3 - DA’s layout in 1999.

Today computers represent the main working tool for designers: people use computers to create artefacts

(with the support of graphical applications), to write

papers, to navigate the Web looking for all kinds of

interesting news and to communicate via email.

A key point: email is used for communicating both with

distant people and with other DARC designers, even

when they are in the laboratory.

Figure 4 - The DA Research Centre today: a “per

person” organisation of space.

As a matter of fact, the workspace is organised no

longer by projects but according to roles –designer,senior designer, supervisor– and to design areas (see

figure 4). This space organisation is more likely to

induce individual rather than team activities, even if the

DARC workspace is now often crowded and noisy

because of the increase, over recent years , in the

number of people working there.

In sum, on the one hand there is a sort of «loss of sight

of project boundaries» and on the other it is difficult to

grasp all the benefits related to a «per-person-

organisation of space».

Due to the lack of a shared project context,communication among team members is sometimes

difficult and knowledge sharing is no longer a natural

fallout of their social behaviour. DARC designers have

learned to use the email to overcome these limits,

frequently exchanging messages even with colleagues

who are also in the laboratory. However, the

effectiveness of their communication is not the same as before. Moreover, the individualised space organisation

and the absence of decoration characterising a project

neither facilitate the exchange of viewpoints and

experiences both among designers and with visitors nor

support their mutual awareness [1]. The DARC

manager tries to overcome this problem by inviting to

any project’s brainstorming and survey meetings also

some senior designers who are not directly involved in

it. Meetings in the entrance hall for a coffee are always

a good occasion for increasing awareness of what is

going on at Domus Academy. Nevertheless, the

peripheral participation of all DARC designers and

even occasional visitors in all DARC’s activities is nomore possible.

Another consequence of the current space organisation

is a neat separation between individual and team work

activities. In the laboratory designers perform

individual activities or conduct only brief exchanges of

views. Meanwhile group activities are generally

performed in the meeting room, where no trace of their

work is visible except for the documents and drawings

they bring there when a meeting is arranged. As our

observation at Philips Design has also shown [6],

communication is more effective when it occurs in a

space whose decoration brings forth the context of theactivity to which it makes reference.

As far as interaction with customers is concerned, today

communication is still episodic and sometimes

ineffective. The project leader remains the

«communication bridge» between the project team and

the client(s) (with all potential breakdowns and

bottlenecks that this solution can generate) letting

designers develop the creative phase without any direct

interference by the client(s) so that their imagination

can run free. However, the DARC ICT infrastructure

could support the creation of a virtual space where

communication and interaction between the projectteam and the client(s) could take place without

interruptions, preventing breakdowns and bottlenecks.

Remote participation in project activities on the part of

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senior designers and project leaders –often away on

business– has been also improved and can be further

improved by the ICT infrastructure.

In conclusion, in its new location Domus Academy has

moved to a more powerful technological support system

allowing its designers to enrich their communication

and design equipment, but its space organisation (and in

the DARC particularly) does not lead to a naturalsupport to communication, co-operation and knowledge

creation and sharing. The latter are very important in

creative organisations since they represent not only the

way through which a design studio improves its skills

and refines its style, but also main components of the

design outcome itself. The ICT infrastructure of Domus

Academy and the way it is already widely used by its

members for both designing and communicating

suggests that through it the DARC workplace can be

augmented so that co-operation and knowledge sharing

within and across project teams are enhanced.

AUGMENTING THE DOMUS ACADEMY SPACE

The comparison of the 1996 and 1999 observations at

Domus Academy allows us to characterise our analysis

in terms of gains and losses in the passage between the

two settings. Moreover it allows us to underline how

the practice of the DARC members immediately tried to

overcome the problems that could arise from the new

workplace organisation, how they are learning to live

and work as effectively as possible in it. Diachronic

analysis seems quite useful in orienting design choices

since it characterises the observed situation in

dynamical terms. Thus, the designed solutions are

evaluated with respect to their impact on the changing

practice of the DARC designers and on their learning.

The story we recalled in the previous section shows that

space arrangements play a very important role in the

practice of human beings. The place we live in shapes

our behaviour as well as the language we use to speak

about it. Whenever we move to a new place, we need

time to feel at home in it, to connect with it. We

therefore took a straightforward approach in

considering even the ICT infrastructure we had to

design a means of transforming the DARC workplace

by augmenting it.

Our analysis shows that the new DARC workplace

introduces new limits with respect to the previous

location of Domus Academy. The physical layout (the

separation between educational space and the DARC),

the enrichment of the technological infrastructure (a

workstation and a desk for each designer), and the

increased size of Domus Academy and in particular of

DARC, prevent the workplace to support per se the

awareness of its inhabitants [1]. Moreover, it shares

other limits with the previous location: the absence of a

place devoted to the interaction with clients and the use

of the open space for both individual and team work

activity impact on performance.

Therefore augmenting the DARC workplace means

designing its technological infrastructure so that it can

serve the different needs of the users in different

situations.

The new system should make the physical space plastic,

so that it can be tailored to meet different needs in any

situation. This new augmented space should involve not

only the DARC open space and its offices, but also any

other used location, like meeting rooms , remote

locations hosting designers when travelling, offices of

clients when communicating with designers. The designof the new system is centred on the projects carried on

at Domus Academy, since the internal organisation is

based on projects. The same situation has been detected

at Philips Design and other design centres, so that it can

be considered general enough to design the whole

system around projects.

The system will be based on a knowledge management

system that collects and organises every information

about projects. This includes formal and informal

documents, participant profiles, conversations and

discussions, comments and sketches , and everything

else is useful to build up a comprehensive description of

the projects' development from its definition to its

completion. The knowledge will be made available to

users in different ways according to their profile and

their current situation. The quality of the presentation is

fundamental to achieve the satisfaction of the users, and

consequently to make the system successful. A shared,

comprehensive view of a project will be made available

to members of the project team to provide them with a

backup repository of the project knowledge. Moreover,

partial and tailored v iews of it will be used to address

different types of activities: individual work, face-to-

face meetings, project meetings, distant co-operation,

etc.. A partial view of the project will be created in a

virtual space where the customers can interact with the

designers reaching an adequate awareness of project

evolution.

Meeting rooms will be equipped with wall projectors or

large screens to decorate it with inspirational images

and drawings to let participants feel as if they were in

the project workplace. The same vein social spaces, like

the entrance hall, will be equipped with wall projectors

to show a selection of evocative images presenting the

ongoing projects and soliciting the curiosity of who is

there to trigger conversations about the project

themselves. Any social space should have windows on

what is going at Domus Academy , in order to increase

mutual awareness.

These are typical examples of the weak augmented

reality perspective. Without changing the physical

layout of the Domus Academy location, without

creating new devices nor transforming existing objects,

only using typical interfaces like PC’s and large

screens, the space becomes flexible and plastic.

The entrance hall becomes the place in which people

are updated on activities carried on in Domus

Academy ; the meeting room becomes part of a project

workplace during members' meetings; the DARC

workspace is at once an open space where designers

perform their individual activities and the home of the

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different workplaces of the ongoing projects; a new

virtual place plays the role of a permanent dedicated

space for interacting with the customers.

The place of the DARC will be changed in a way that is

not possible in the physical space by the new ICT

infrastructure and services, since they create new

interaction possibilities. Weakly augmented reality is

not looking for virtual extensions of the space that areinvisible to human eyes; rather, it aims to create places

where people can live and practice in ways extending

and modifying their previous habits.

A goal of the system we are developing is to minimise

the human effort needed for using and maintaining it.

Otherwise, it would increase the articulation of work

[19], distracting users from their focus on design. The

information and the knowledge are captured from the

every-day activities of designers, and stored in the

knowledge bases associated with projects. The project

knowledge bases are, in fact, the source for any of the

described views, like populating the (virtual) place for

the interaction with the customers or decorating the

walls of the entrance hall.

The presentation of the knowledge must be specifically

designed to be effective in specific situations. The

system must be able to provide a tailored view of a

project when the designer is working at her desk, when

she discusses a detail with a colleague, or when she is

presenting intermediate results during a meeting.

Moreover, the team members should access a view of

the project knowledge according to the role they play

and the situation they are in : for example, the project

leader, when working alone, can access management

information on the project that should not be displayed

to designers. The system is requested to automatically

detect the current situation and behave accordingly.

The system we are designing requires the devise of a

new kind of interface that can host several, related

information. The basic idea is to make the focus of each

view the centre of the presentation surrounded by its

context , i.e. by the collection of knowledge items,

information, and data related to it. For example, the

context of a document includes related documents of

different kinds –sources, inspirational, references,

historical–, people somehow involved –authors, clients,

developers, managers, experts–, related knowledge

areas, and so forth. Figure 5 illustrates a visionary

interface in which the evolution of the central document

is browsable (going along the stream that collects the

series of document's versions), and the displayed

version is surrounded by its context (the ring around the

document). A goal of the Klee&Co project is to devise

and implement an interface that comes close to this

visionary interface.

In conclusion, the system we are developing must

therefore be very flexible , capable of managing and

distributing the knowledge created within a process

wherever it is needed and presenting it in any situation

in a suitable way.

wherever it is needed and presenting it in any situation

in a suitable way.

Figure 5 - A "visionary" interface.

THE KLEE&CO SYSTEM

As discussed in the previous sections, our aim is to

augment the place of DARC, in such a way that

designers can practice without the constraints created by the physical arrangements of their location. The

main problem is therefore to offer them the access to

the knowledge, supporting their awareness. Since

documents are a relevant part of the explicit knowledge

created within design, the system we aim to develop has

to provide multi-view access to project documentation.

The goal is to give the user comprehensive information

about technical contents and related documents from

both Domus Academy repositories and external sources

such as the Web. Moreover, non-technical issues like

the process that delivered the current version of a

document or the debate that underwent the decisions

have to be properly addressed. This information formsthe context of a document, to give to the user

knowledge about documents throughout their entire life.

A first step toward an integrated environment is the

capability of managing documents of different nature

along with associated information that forms the

document context. This requires a semi-structured

definition of documents and a system that fills and

manages the structures according to the nature of each

document. Next a system to support the activity within

a company must be devised and developed. This system

requires an open architecture since it has to include the

tools already in use, filters and adapters to treat specificfile formats, and new components that implement the

innovative functionality.

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In what follows, we discuss the structure of a document

and outline the architecture of the Klee&Co system.

The document structure

A comprehensive knowledge management system

needs to handle different kinds of items. Examples are

projects, user profiles and documents. A project is the

usual context in which DARC members perform their

activities. A project can be modelled as a collection of

documents and people. People are described by user

profiles that capture roles, interests and activities of the

persons who interact with the system. Profiles are used

to customise the system behaviour according to user

expectations. A document is anything produced within

a project.

The typical document at DARC is a text or a drawing

file created by an application like MS Word or

AutoCAD or any graphic design system. In our context

a document becomes a complex entity in which the

typical text or drawing file, i.e. the content, is just one

of the composing elements. Moreover, associated with a

document there are its versions to capture the evolution

of its content.

Each (version) of a document is composed of the

following parts:

§§ General information: author(s), format, location, ...

§§ The content: text, drawing, pictures, ... in specific

format;

§§ Content representations: summary, abstract, HTML

version, ASCII version, thumbnail, preview, ...;

§§ Knowledge information: kind of content, keywords,

timestamps and other indicators' values;

§§ Context information: notes, conversations, related

documents:

The first two parts cover the typical information

associated with any document file. The others are

specific to the Klee&Co system. Each content

representation supports a different view of the

document. For example, the HTML format of a MS

Word document allows the visualisation of the content

in a Web browser, the summary could be used to give a

good understanding of the content without displaying

the whole document, and the ASCII version is better

exploited for automatic processing.

Beyond supporting typical personal use, representations

address the use of documents in a social context. For

example, a MS Power Point version makes a document

suitable for presentations during meetings; a selection

of pictures together with the indication of the name of

the project and the name of a reference person could

form a document representation to be displayed in a

public space like the entrance hall. The Klee&Co

system will be able to build up and select the right

representations of documents, either automatically or

with user help.

Content representations are also important since they

allow for the inclusion of non-electronic documents in

the knowledge base. Assume that in a project a wooden

mock-up of an artefact has been made. Of course, the

model cannot be included as is, but it is possible to

represent it electronically. Representations are useful

even for electronic documents since the original files,

e.g. MS Word or AutoCAD files, are often difficult to

manage because of their proprietary formats and of

their being too detailed to be presented as they are.

Representations overcome these two limits by

providing the best view of a document in every context.

The information associated with a document supports

the definition of its context and therefore of its

relationships with other documents. For example, the

kind of content specifies whether an MS Word file is a

technical report or a marketing presentation, while

keywords capture the knowledge embedded in the

document to allow for document classification and

comparison.

More specific relational indicators can be introduced to

define the relationships among documents. The

timestamp indicator, for example, defines the temporal

relation among the documents created within a project.

Assume that there is a project plan that defines the

expected time dependence among a set of documents.

Two possible representations of this relation can be

given: a Gantt chart where documents are associated

with timestamps or a file of documents labelled by the

values of the timestamp. In the former case, a reference

to the Gantt would be included in the context

information of the documents, in the latter the

timestamp values would be included in the knowledge

information section.

Beyond references to related documents, the context

information associated with documents allows

management of (short) documents that are exchanged as

attachments to another document. Examples of these

are notes and conversations. A note is a short text

associated with a document or part of it. Typically, a

note is a comment or a sketch on a picture or a chunk of

text. A conversation is similar to a news thread and

identifies a sequence of (mail) messages to discuss or

comment on (part of) a document.

The Klee&Co architecture

The objective of the Klee&Co system is to support

users in every activity they perform within DARC. This

means that we need to augment a traditional Document

Management System, in our case DocuShare by Xerox,

with new functionality. The system should be able to

understand the form of use and behave consequently; it

should be possible to save and restore the current

working session; a seamless switch between common

tools, like editors and word processors, and our system

should be supported; uploading of documents and

information should be assisted by proper tools to collect

and organise the knowledge; accordingly, output tools

should address knowledge retrieval and presentation.

The Web technology supports remote access from any

kind of platform and connection to many common

tools, it is the best choice for any successful knowledge

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management system that needs to be easily accessible

from any computer and location. Web access allows for

remote connection and interaction to both internal and

external users. Internal users, like members of a project

team, can work from home or any other location almost

as if they were at their workplace in DARC. External

users, like clients, can use the same environment to

access the workspace created for interacting with them.

The Klee&Co system is a Web-based system. The

multi-tier architecture of the current prototype is

sketched in Figure 6. A key issue in designing the

system was the inclusion of existing tools into the

original structure of DocuShare. The solution was the

introduction of a new tier that acts as a bridge between

the web server and DoscuShare, and interfaces COTS

and tools. The Klee&Co tier traps and processes the

requests coming from the user and prepares the output.

Moreover, the Klee&Co tier includes a set of agents

that collect and process data to build up the knowledge

related to projects, people and documents to meet the

requirements described in the previous sections.

Figure 6 – The Klee&Co system.

The client side is a common Web browser augmented

by software components like plug-ins, JavaScript

scripts and Java applets to enrich the user interface.

Moreover, various applications will be embedded to

address specific activities, like PlaceWare to support

conferences and AskOnce to enhance searching (both

by Xerox).

The Klee&Co system offers different interaction

modes, according to the profile of the connected user, to

satisfy the different needs. For example, the project co-

ordinator can discuss a detail of a product with the team

while sitting in a hotel room. The client can follow thedevelopment of a product by browsing and discussing

the documentation made accessible to her at any time.

The system interface resembles the visionary interface

presented in Figure 5. Figure 7 is a snapshot of the

interface of the current prototype. The centre of the

screen is occupied by (a representation of) a document.

The windows around it define the context for that

document. Both the document and the context are

active. For example, when going on a note icon with the

mouse pointer on the document, a window opens over

the document to show the content of the note and the

icon of the author is highlighted; moreover, by clickingthe note it is possible to add a comment in different

ways through a pop-up menus. In the same way, going

on a related document icon the system opens a window

with further information, and clicking makes that

document the centre of the presentation and triggers

screen reorganisation.

Figure 7 - A snapshot of the Klee&Co prototype.

The document management system is the back-end that

acts as a knowledge repository. Tools like mailing

systems, search agents, and awareness agents –beyond

the information supplied by the users– contribute to

building up the knowledge. Filtering agents process the

input to extract and store the knowledge. Examples of

filtering agents that will be embedded into the Klee&Co

system are information filters, conversation managers,

document categorises (WebSOM; [12]) and keyword

extractors (KEA; [9]). Smart filters will play an

essential role since they have the task of automatically

building the representations and extracting knowledge

from the uploaded documents. Output agents will

process knowledge before being sent to the user. These

agents have the task of formatting what will be

displayed by the user interface, that is, the browser and

the software mentioned before.

CONCLUSION

By observing and analysing the practice of designers at

Domus Academy and designing a system to augment

their workplace, we have discovered that within a social

context the sense of place is not directly related to the

perception of its spatial dimension, but rather to its

capacity of bringing forth its main features from the

practice point of view. This has more to do with the

language it offers its inhabitants in speaking about their

common operations and about the things they create

than with its creating realistic simulations of the

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physical space.

Augmented places are not virtual copies of a physical

place: their spatial arrangements are not possible in the

physical reality, they are the genuine outcome of the

design of a new form of space, with qualities like

plasticity and flexibility quite absent from the physical

space where we live.

Only after we have conceived the new qualities of an

augmented place we can shift our attention to

improving its perception by its inhabitants. But here

another story begins starts, one we are not yet ready to

tell.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper reports on research done within the EC

funded Esprit Project, Klee&Co. The authors gratefully

acknowledge the other participants in the Klee&Co

project and in particular Alessandro Rancati of Domus

Academy, Lucia Massarutto and Thomas Schael of

IRSO and Luca Bernardinello and Domenico Perrottaof DISCO at University of Milano – Bicocca for the

many discussions on the issues presented here.

Particular thanks go to the members of the Domus

Academy Design Center for the patience and spirit of

collaboration they exhibited while observed by our

team.

Finally, the authors wish to thank the anonymous

reviewers who offered comments helping them to focus

the Klee&Co project toward its goals.

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