Shared mediated workspaces

Shared mediated spaces provide viable alternatives for meetings and interactions. The development of collaborative mediated workspaces and shared negotiation spaces will have a fundamental impact on all human practices. Previous design-led research, has identified spatial design concepts, such as mediated gaze, and spatial montage, which, if unaddressed, may be said to impose friction, and thus impact negatively on the experience of mediated presence. The current paper discusses a set of conceptual tools for presence design, in relation to a prototype that is currently being developed by an interdisciplinary academic work group: The Mediated Sketching Table. The prototype combines analogue and digital interaction tools and technologies including HTML5 and WebRTC. Here, we present our initial observations when using the prototype and discuss possible ways to overcome design friction in the prototype. We acknowledge that mediated presence cannot be ensured by design or technology alone. However, by monitoring various design features, presence designers can seek to reduce the friction that otherwise inhibits mediated presence, mutual trust, knowledge-sharing, and teamwork efficiency.