Physical-virtual Knowledge Work Environments — First Steps

By examining the common distinction between “physical” and “virtual”, from different viewpoints such as users’ view and designers’ view, and by briefly discussing some development of theoretical and practical tools for integrating the physical with the virtual, this paper presents our first steps towards the goal of designing better knowledge work environments where physical and virtual activities could be performed jointly and with minimal overhead with regard to the gap between the two worlds. Some general problem areas, to be included in the future research agenda, are also identified and briefly discussed. 1. THE PHYSICAL-VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT GAP Knowledge work (Drucker, 1973; Kidd, 1994) environments equipped with personal computers tend to create a significant gap between the virtual environment offered by the computer system(s) on the one hand, and the surrounding physical environment on the other (Pederson, 1999). A field study involving 81 professionals categorised as knowledge workers with the aim of investigating the effects of alternating between physical and virtual environments has been performed during 1999. Early analysis supports the belief that the gap is a common and noticeable obstacle in everyday knowledge work (see figure 1 and 2 below) although further empirical investigation is necessary. 2. THE PHYSICAL-VIRTUAL DESIGN PERSPECTIVE Based on analysis of differences and similarities between physical and virtual environments (e.g., Arias, Eden, & Fischer, 1997; Pederson, 1999), a perspective for design and analysis of integrated physical-virtual environments is derived. The physical-virtual design perspective emphasises a holistic view on the design of knowledge work environments and the objects within them, in order to break loose from traditional distinctions made by designers of software, electronics hardware and architecture (Pederson, 1999). In practice, the physical-virtual design perspective is about categorising physical and virtual objects with the aim to find ways to conceptually and technically link objects 3 26