Technological approaches worldwide have created personalized and realistic avatars by integrating photos and streaming video into computergenerated scenes. In contrast to realistic representations, we will concentrate on symbolic representations of action and presence, and have begun experimenting with tracking devices that can easily convey body movements of remote partners. The awareness problem is a focal problem in CSCW research. Most approaches concentrate on task-oriented awareness, i.e. providing information about the status of shared objects that belong to a certain cooperative task. Less research concentrates on social awareness, i.e. the information we perceive peripherally while sharing the same room or floor with each other.
All approaches have in common that they concentrate on application-specific solutions.
We believe that an application overlapping approach is necessary that integrates the provision of both social and task oriented awareness. The ultimate goal is the development of models for a situated and context-driven presentation of presence and activity information in inhabited shared environments. They all suffer from an imbalance of effort and benefit from the individual's point of view. With regard to the following two research topics we do not pursue technical solutions, but restrict ourselves to empirical analyses and evaluations. How can we turn ubiquitous communication devices into cooperative devices that enable users to stay in touch and to share their knowledge within a team or community.