Media spaces : bringing people together in a video, audio, and computing environment

A media space was created at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the mid-1980s. For 3 years beginning in 1985, one of the research laboratories at Xerox PARC was geographically split between Palo Alto, California, and Portland, Oregon. The stated intent was to maintain a single group and explore technologies to support collaborative work. The research findings from the media space development include: 1. The media demonstrates that technology can be developed to support social activity. 2. The Palo Alto-Portland link shows that with technological support, a working group can collaborate effectively cross-site as a single entity. 3. Considerations in the design of media space have been identified. 4. Design through an interweaving of technology and work activity is viable. While many issues in the media space have been addressed by the development of social convention, there have been recurring problems with several aspects of the media space that individual adaptation and social convention are not equipped to fix.