LACE members: Kristian Simsarian- Leader of the LACE group

The construction of a disparate range of collaborative networked environments raises fundamental questions about how these environments are experienced by their inhabitants. It is currently unclear what models and mechanisms are needed to enable inhabitants to actively experience collaborative environments in a manner that supports their activities.

In particular, focused research questions include:

• What are the needs and demands of new classes of inhabitants as we move away from professional workers to new and emerging classes of users?
• What are the appropriate techniques to present information, activities, and tool capabilities within these environments?
• How can these environments be made habitable when presented using different forms of interaction and presentation technology?
• What new experiences are possible with the new media that go beyond understood limitations of the traditional media?
• What mechanisms and methods can be provided to enable authorship and ownership of content in these new environments?
• What novel interface devices will emerge and how can these be applied to different situations?
• How can different devices be used across a range of different environments in a meaningsful, sensible, and empowering manner?
  

The exploration of these issues is both constructional and methodological. It is constructional in that new technological prototypes need to be developed, demonstrated and explored. It is methodological in that input comes from a range of different disciplines and traditions in the design, construction and use of interactive principles and media. This investigation occurs in parallel and these methodological and constructional techniques evolve to address the novel research challenges encountered.

The instantiation of these experiences should be intelligible and vivid while the presentation and interaction tools, methods, mechanisms need to be transparent with respect to the activity. These new experiences should augment, not replace, other experiences and work practices. The LACE group focuses on developing these new ways of experiencing future collaborative environments. The research involves developing new interaction techniques, mechanism, prototypes, spaces including:

• Interactive experiences suitable for a wider user population, e.g. the general citizen and children.
• Interaction that is able to handle a diverse collection of devices e.g. tracking systems, public Display, PDAs, tangible interfaces.
• New forms of interface that expressive,engaging,as well as functional (e.g. educational, explorative and entertaining environments)
• New collaborative experiences that enable authorship and customization (e.g.storytelling,modeling).
• Tools, objects and mechanisms that encourage collaboration.
• Mechanisms to enable awareness and collaborative practices that break from traditional desktop solutions.
• Partnerships of interative development involving users and researchers in various disciplines.