An evaluation of a physical-virtual design framework

The physical and virtual worlds seems to be coming closer and closer together, giving rise to modelling and design issues when tasks and objects can be said to exist in both worlds. Pederson (2003) presents a framework for dealing with such physical‐virtual integration issues. The goal of this thesis is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the framework proposed by Pederson, as a modelling tool and as a design tool. An evalu‐ ation is conducted to test the framework as a modelling tool, and another to test it as a design tool. An existing business environment, a book store, is chosen to test the framework as a modelling tool on. A simple scenario describes a number of typical book store activities and actions. These are then re‐described using terms and con‐ structions from Pedersons work, such as physical‐virtual artefacts, physical‐virtual activities, hierarchical model of physical‐virtual space and situative space organiza‐ tion. In order to test the framework as a design tool a distributed physical‐virtual bul‐ letin board is designed using a client‐server model. Some of Pedersons terms and concepts are used during the design process, much the same ones as those used above. Also, the server and the virtual client are implemented in Java. Due to simplicity of the server and the virtual client implementations, many features are missing, but the basic functionality is there. The framework is found to be usable as a modelling tool for both artefacts and activity in a real‐world situation. As a design tool it is found to be more useful during conceptual design rather than working with detailed issues. In some aspects the framework is rather vague, allowing the modeller or designer a large amount of freedom. Future work should more thoroughly contrast and compare the different ideas presented by Pederson. Future work on the physical‐virtual bulletin board should implement the physical client, extend the virtual client and fine‐tune the communication between server and client.