Design of awareness interface for distributed teams in display-rich advanced collaboration environments

This paper discusses design issues for enhancing awareness among distributed teams in the display-rich advanced collaboration environments. We conducted an exploratory design study of nine groups performing a set of collaborative tasks using a variety of advanced collaboration and display technologies. The result showed that group interaction and awareness was improved by the use of multiple public displays due to information visibility to all members. While maximized visibility supported work activity awareness, it also revealed a need to support shared resource awareness and more importantly task awareness for effective group coordination.