Cinematic Meeting Facilities Using Large Displays _ _ _ _ _ _ 1

Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0272-1716/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 1 Most people think of using large-display installations for highly technical visualization work such as scientific visualization of a large data set, process control, or technical design. In the past several years at Alias, we have investigated these types of applications, for example, using large displays that let automotive stylists view and design on full-size displays of automobile exteriors. Recently, however, we have begun extending our work with large-display technology into the domain of corporate meeting facilities. At our corporate headquarters in Toronto, we have designed and built the Alias Visualization Studio (the VizStudio), a unique meeting facility that makes use of large display technology to support digital visual communication and collaboration with corporate clients, future customers, employees, and corporate partners (see Figure 1). We have discovered that using large displays in this type of corporate meeting facility produces its own unique set of challenges and solutions. Early in the conceptual design phase for the VizStudio we realized that we were not just designing a flexible meeting space but, more broadly, a user experience. Aligned with the premise from Pine and Gilmore’s book, The Experience Economy, our design approach was to consider a visitors’ total experience, including arrival and initial impression, work requirements, all day meeting needs, overall comfort, social needs, departure feelings, and so on. Moreover in Computers as Theatre, Laurel proposes a theater metaphor for designing interactions with digital information. Combining this metaphor with the experience approach and large-display technology has yielded a facility with many cinematic and theatrical characteristics. In this article, we highlight the subtle but important interplay between large-display technologies, interior design, and social and corporate dynamics.