In addition, space is available for common working areas at each site. To understand the design factors affecting the effectiveness of collaborative environments involving geographically distributed participants. These supports may be as a simple as having a whiteboard and enough room to use it, projection from laptops to a common surface, and simple tools for sharing resources. These technologies, whether high or low tech, create an increased shared space, an 'information commons'. Our objective is to understand how people use these information commons, both to coordinate their activity and to acquire information.
Technology can create new forms of common space and make it easy to use.
It can also let people at a distance participate in commons better. Our objective in this research is to understand how to improve access to the commons. In thinking about this question from a design point of view we must always be looking for principles that separate out ennvironments. Our long term scientific and practical goal is to develop a set of principles and operational methods for evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative environment. For instance, by allowing universal sharing of wall projected material we make it easy for any one of us to click on a link in another person's window and have it open in ours.