When interaction is desired, people can easily contact one another because communication software is just a button-press away. Keywords Groupware, contact facilitation, awareness, coordination. Introduction Informal awareness of one's community is the general sense of who is around and what others are up to-the kinds of things that people track when they work together in the same physical environment. Yet casual interaction is problematic in distributed communities. While groupware is readily available, people have considerable trouble staying aware of opportunities for collaboration, and in establishing electronic meetings.
Media spaces are one way of providing distributed groups with informal awareness of each other.
Users can select offices and common areas at remote sites, and view them through continuous video. Yet even compressed video demands too much bandwidth for everyday use. The community is presented on one's screen as an array of images. However, Portholes still requires people to have video cameras attached to their workstations and a willingness to leave them turned on. An alternative to video is iconic presence indicators that show who is around and the likelihood of their availability.