Reflecting on Several Metaphors of MUD-based Media Spaces

Greenberg, S., McEwan, G. and Rounding, M. (2009)
Reflecting on Several Metaphors of MUD-based Media Spaces. In Media Space: 20+ Years of Mediated Life. (S. Harrision, Ed.), Springer, pages 425-440. Extends shorter, earlier paper in Proc. CSCW'06 Workshop on Media Space - Reflecting on 20 Years.

View Publication and Related Materials

HyperlinkHyperlink (http://www.springer.com/computer/user+interfaces/book/978-1-84882-482-9)
PDF PaperPDF Paper (2009-Reflecting.MediaSpacesBook.pdf)

Abstract

Over the last decade, we designed and used three media spaces: Teamrooms, Notification Collage, and Community Bar. All were oriented towards creating a shared environment supporting a small community of people: about two to around twenty members were expected to inhabit the media space. All provided others with a sense of presence through portrait images and/or snapshot-based video of its members, and all emphasised creation and sharing of real-time group-ware artefacts. They differed in that each was designed around a different meta-phor: multiple rooms for Teamrooms, a shared live bulletin board for the Notification Collage, and an expandable sidebar that contained multiple places for Community Bar. This chapter briefly reflects on how the systems and their metaphors served as a communal place. We saw that many factors - both large and small - profoundly affected how these media spaces were adopted by the community. We also saw that there was a tension between the explicit structures offered by media space design (rooms, places, bulletin boards and so on) vs. the very light weight and often implicit ways that people form and reform into groups and how they attend to information in the real world.

Bibtex entry

@INBOOK { 2009-Reflecting.MediaSpacesBook,
CLASS = { CHAPTER },
AUTHOR = { Greenberg, S. and McEwan, G. and Rounding, M. },
TITLE = { Reflecting on Several Metaphors of MUD-based Media Spaces },
BOOKTITLE = { Media Space: 20+ Years of Mediated Life },
PAGES = { 425-440 },
PUBLISHER = { Springer },
YEAR = { 2009 },
SERIES = { Computer Supported Cooperative Work Series },
EDITOR = { S. Harrision },
URL = { http://www.springer.com/computer/user+interfaces/book/978-1-84882-482-9 },
NOTE = { Extends shorter, earlier paper in Proc. CSCW'06 Workshop on Media Space - Reflecting on 20 Years },
}