ActiveMap:
A Visualization Tool
for Location Awareness
to Support Informal Interactions
Joe McCarthy & Eric Meidel

Outline
• Grand Challenge for Ubiquitous Computing
• Active Environments Research
• ActiveMap Application
• Experiences with ActiveMap
• Future Work

Ubiquitous Computing
• Proliferation of devices
• Variety of “network computers”
• telephones, TVs, cameras, microphones,
refrigerators, microwaves, toasters...
• Distribution of computing resources
• portable
• wearable
• embedded

Major Trends in Computing
18
Mainframes
16
14
PCs
12
Year ($Bn)
Sales per
10 Ubiquitous
Computing
8
6
4
2
0
1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

Grand Challenge: So what?
• UbiComp: technology in search of a problem?
• Lots of devices that can communicate with us
and each other … what are they going to say?
• What would your toaster say to your refrigerator?
• What kinds of new capabilities are enabled
by this new paradigm of computing?
• Applications?
• HUC99, others (CHI, ISWC, …)

Sense & Respond
• UbiComp: New paradigm of computing
• Old: input/output (foreground)
• New: sense/respond (background)
• Active Environments: “UbiComp in a box”
• Network of sensors, responders
• Concentrated in a small area
• Redefining human-computer interaction
• users --> inhabitants

Active Environments
Most environments are passive --
deaf, dumb & blind --
unaware of their inhabitants
and unable to assist them in a meaningful way.
In contrast, an active environment is
a physical space
that can sense and respond appropriately
to the people and activities taking place
within it.

First Steps Toward
Active Environments
• Focus: Informal Communication
• Crucial for success in project/team-oriented work
• Attempts to connect often end in failure
• Suite of Awareness Tools
• Provide information about who’s where
• Infrared badges, sensors
• Create informal interaction opportunities
for non-adjacent colleagues
• “semi-serendipitous encounters”

Active Environments
Research Issues
• Utility of Awareness Tools
• [How] useful?
• Useful how?
• Which tools?
• Which settings?
• Measurement
• usage, polls, interviews, logs
• Privacy / benefit tradeoff

PocketWatch

EventManager

ActiveMap

Related Work
• Xerox PARC
• “locations” program
• Olivetti Research Lab
• Active Badge system
• Our goals
• Explore visualization issues
• Privacy / benefit tradeoff
• User experiences

ActiveMap: Visualization

Visualization: Groups

Visualization: “Freshness”

Interaction with ActiveMap
• View manipulation
• pan, zoom, “home”
• tool-tip pop-ups on mouse-over
• people, locations
• Find
• recenters map over person’s location
• Directed audio
• text messages via speech synthesis to node

User Experiences
• Desktop computers
• Infrequently used
• Early bugs, screen size, poor marketing
• Kiosk
• Used by group members & non-members
• Members: consult after physical search
• Non-members: no instruction

Visualization Preferences
• Groups
• stacked over tiled
• Freshness
• frame shading over image fading
• Elapsed time scale
• logarithmic over linear, 0-15 mins. to 1-2 hrs.
• Sounds
• none

Future Work
• Integration of other “sensors”
• Presence: motion, camera, microphone
• Activity: keyboard, telephone, calendar
• Integration of other communication modalities
• Instant text messaging (AIM)
• Telephone
• Videoconference (NetMeeting)

Future Work
• New interaction modes (kiosk)
• Speech recognition / speech synthesis
• Touch screen
• New visualization capabilities
• Rotation of stacked images (at-a-glance)
• Snail trails
• Playback

Future Work
• [More thorough] user studies
• Log analysis, option settings
• Extend to new group (ETS)
• Inter- vs. intra-group issues
• Infrastructural, political, social
• Integrate with Workplace of the Future (ETS)
• Integrated Email, NetMeeting, Scheduling

ActiveMap:
A Visualization Tool
for Location Awareness
to Support Informal Interactions
Joe McCarthy
mccarthy@cstar.ac.com