Bridging the gap between virtual visitors to an organisation through its Web site and employees
Emmanuel Frécon - emmanuel@sics.se
This document presents the vision behind the WebPR installation and some of the long term goals that we are trying to address.
For many organisations, having a Web server represents an opportunity to improve their communication with the outer world. The Web server is a channel through which organisations present themselves, their projects and visions and information about their products and communicate with their customers and (virtual) visitors. In short, one of the main reasons for having an attractive Web server is to improve public relations in general.
With the popularity of the Web increasing exponentially, Web presence has become more and more important and all organisation types are concerned, from small and medium businesses, through big conglomerates, to government agencies. The Internet is there to stay and the amount of information that can be found on Web servers increases at a pace similar to the increase of new connections. For organisations, more people connected means that the information presented has more potential and will reach out to the masses. For business oriented organisations, this means an increasing number of customers. For public organisations, this means the possibility to better communicate with the citizen and inform on the latest decisions and let him/her know what taxes are used for.
However, even in a digital world, there will always be the need for the physical, both the physical contact and the physical settings. Even if people have started working from home, organisations will long need one or more physical buildings within which the business is got done. More importantly, the digital age has still not replaced the need for human contact and meetings and visits will long be an inherent part of a business.
The aim of the application and setting described in this document is to bridge this gap. We want to be able to offer a channel through which the digital and the physical will be able to exchange enough information to keep contact and bring back a human-oriented vision to the digital age of Web servers.
The main track experimented in this application will consist in allowing employees and visitors at the physical setting of an organisation to get a sense of the amount of (virtual) customers and connected persons, together with their interests and actions. This main track will visualise and personify Web traffic for the Web server of the origanisation at some central places of its physical setting, e.g. foyers, receptions, etc.
The "return" track that we will experiment with consists of trying to close the loop, so as to allow Web visitors to get insight into both the visualisation and its physical locations. This return track will offer digital services on the Web server to serve this means.
We envision that this idea will bring back an embryo of collaboration between digital and physical inhabitants. Extensions to the setup summarised above, including ways to communicate through text and possibly audio would increase collaboration further and will be experimented with along the project.
In the following sections, we develop and detail both tracks and some possible extensions.
Within this track there are two goals that are important to achieve. Firstly, the Web server traffic visualisation should be of quality and interesting enough. Indeed, it is forseen that this visualisation will be used by organisations as part of their public relations, this time on-(physical)site. Secondly, the visualisation should both allow some control from occasional employees or visitors and propose an automatic mode, appealing enough to be run discontinuously every day.
We believe that the quality of the visualisation lies not only in the aestethic of its appearance but also in the amount of information that it synthesises. In the following paragraphs, we describe some of the information pieces that we see as the building bricks of this visualisation.
A key aspect consists in finding a setting that allows both to get an understanding and a vision of the entirety of the Web server and the information that its contains, while making it possible to provide insights on particular areas of the server. We believe that a three-dimensional representation where each document of the server is represented as an icon is adequate to this purpose. To enhance the visualisation, 3-D arrows could link together the documents that are linked on the server, by matching the hypertext links.
Finding a good iconic representation and an adequate 3-D layout are open issues. However, it is possible to describe some mechanisms and techniques. A possible iconic representation is simply a cube, texture mapped with either the content of the document as a whole of one of its composing pictures. However, organisations should be able to choose these representations and let professional designer draw 3-D models for some chosen documents. A possible 3-D layout consists in using some metrics gathered from the documents themselves and map these metrics to the three-dimensional space, for example one metric per axis or a concentric Euler representation where two chosen metrics correspond to angles and a third metric is mapped to the distance from the origin. Example of metrics are document size, number of images, number of visitors, length, relation to keywords, etc. Note that metrics allow to bring back important and interesting information into the visualisation.
A second key aspect consists in finding a good way to represent digital visitors and their actions. Again, this is an open issue, but it is possible to develop some ideas. We wish to show where (from which country, etc.) a visitor is coming from. We also wish to show the path that he/she takes along the network of documents, and this can be achieved by drawing a trail behing his/her representation.
Within this track, there are two goals that are important to achieve. Firstly, digital inhabitants should get insights into the application and know that they are being tracked. Secondly, in order to create a very primitve collaboration, the digital inhabitans should get insights into how the visualisation is shown and who is currently watching it.
We propose to export the visualisation to a part of the Web server, in the form of a low frame rate update of the three-dimensional environment. Announcing appropriately this part of the digital server will satisfy the need to communicate with visitors and keep personal integrity. This itself, can be part of a public relations campaign and thus increase the number of visits to the Web server.
Additionally, we propose to add one or several Web cameras that will be placed so that they give a global vision of both the screen onto which the application is shown and the physical surroundings. To enhance collaboration, it is possible to use motor-driven cameras which zooming and angle can be controlled through the Web, i.e. by one or several Web visitors. To gain acceptance from the employees and visitors themselves, these rotating cameras could be associated with a screen, which would show some information on the person that controls it.
It is interesting to notice that, as part of the Web server, both services described above will also be part of its visualisation...