The Pond is a multi user horizontally projected system for access and manipulation of fluid information elements from the Internet (e.g. the WWW) as well as for communication and collaboration between users being present both remotely and physically. The choice of a Pond metaphor is deliberate in that it seeks to evoke the general concepts associated with evolutionary ecosystems and techniques where complex assemblies of users, electronic agents, interface and communication resources are dynamically built and destroyed according to need.

In the Pond design we try to move away from the conventional ideas of desktop metaphors and the established notions of how information systems are accessed and manipulated. Instead, concepts from areas such as bio-ecosystems, fishing, fluid mechanics, roulette wheels and jukeboxes have been our inspiration.

Conventional data search engines (e.g. Internet search tools such as AltaVista , Yahoo and products such as Oracle DBMS) mostly provide textual representations of results, and are thereby somewhat limited to 2-dimensional layout. 3D data visualization systems such as VR-VIBE from Nottingham University and Q-PIT developed at Lancaster University show some promise in building a general overview, but require prior knowledge of the system in order to interact and especially navigate.