Normative Virtual Environments - Integrating Physical and Virtual Under the One Umbrella

The paper outlines a normative approach to the design of distributed applications that must consistently integrate a number of environments (i.e. form-based interfaces, 3D Virtual Worlds, physical world). The application of the described ideas is illustrated on the example of a fish market, which is an application that can simultaneously be accessed by the people from the physical world, people using form-based interfaces and people embodied in a 3D Virtual World as avatars. The Normative Virtual Environments approach in this case allows for maintaining a consistent causal connection amongst all these environments.