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Greenberg, S. (1996)
Peepholes: Low Cost Awareness of One’s Community. In ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System, Companion Proceedings – ACM CHI’96, pages 206-207, April 13-17.
Type: Refereed conference (short paper).
Earlier version: Report 1995-580-32, December.
Additional materials: powerpoint presentation.
DOI: 10.1145/257089.257283
Download as: Pdf
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Powerpoint
Abstract.
In distributed communities, media spaces supply people with an awareness of who is around by displaying video or periodic snapshots of common areas and offices. This in turn facilitates casual interaction. Peepholes is a low cost alternative. Instead of video, iconic presence indicators show the availability of people in a virtual community. If people are absent, a user can ‘ambush’ them by asking the system to announce their return. When interaction is desired, people can easily contact one another because communication software is just a button-press away.
Keywords: Groupware, contact facilitation, awareness, coordination.