The project "Ambient Agoras" aims at providing situated services, place-relevant information, and feeling of the place (‘genius loci’) to users, so that they feel at home in the office. This is achieved by using information technology in an innovative way, e.g., via ambient displays embedded in the environment and mobile devices that are used in a combined way. "Ambient Agoras" adds a layer of information-based services to the place, enabling the user to communicate for help, guidance, work, or fun. It integrates information into the architectural environment by means of smart artefacts. The computer as a device disappears, but the functionality is available in a ubiquitous and invisible fashion. Finally, "Ambient Agoras" augments reality by providing better "affordances" to existing places. It aims at turning everyday places into social marketplaces (= ‘agora’) of ideas and information where people can meet and interact.

Fig. 1 Conceptual Design of the Augmented Lounge Area showing elements as, e.g., the ViewPort (mobile device) and the Hello.Wall (wall-sized ambient display) for providing situated and personalized information based on sensing data

Fig. 2 Realization: mobile ViewPort used in combination with the large Hello.Wall
 

Selected publications:

Streitz, N. A., Prante, T., Röcker, C., van Alphen, D., Stenzel, R., Magerkurth, C., Lahlou, S., Nosulenko, V., Jegou, F., Sonder, F., Plewe, D. (2007).

Smart Artefacts as Affordances for Awareness in Distributed Teams.

In: N. Streitz, A. Kameas, I. Mavrommati (Eds.),

The Disappearing Computer: Interaction Design,
System Infrastructures and Applications for Smart Environments.

pp. 3 – 29. Springer LNCS 4500.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-72727-9_1

Th. Prante, R. Stenzel, C. Röcker, N. A. Streitz, C. Magerkurth (2004).
Ambient Agoras - InfoRiver, SIAM, Hello.Wall.
In: Extended Abstracts and Video Proceedings of ACM CHI’04.
(Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2004) pp. 763-764.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/985921.985924

The CHI'04 video is available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJIegIWxsZ0

The full description of the Disappearing Computer project "Ambient Agoras" is available via the project website  ambient-agoras.org
For information, please contact: Dr. Dr. Norbert Streitz via mail