I was interested to see if some kinds of “meeting rooms of the future” already existed, so I searched around the internet for a few. I came across Oli Mival’s Interactive Collaborative Environment, located at Edinburgh Napier University. Mival demonstrates the features of the room in a video.
The first thing you will notice in the video is an interactive table in which photos and documents can be moved and resized. Using documents in this way is no doubt very intuitive, as it resembles a traditional way of looking at pictures or whatever at a table. However, one could ask if that is precisely the problem – does the interactive table really offer something to make meetings and working more efficient? We could make a few points here: interactive table saves physical space and prevents obstruction of view for other people, as there are no real documents lying around everywhere. Also, digital documents won’t get lost or drop on the floor. Furthermore, resizing and zooming can be done easily, allowing everyone to see what is being talked about without the need to pass the document around by hand.
Also, there are touch screens scattered across the walls in the room, all of which have the same display, i.e. when someone does something to one screen, all the others will follow. The benefits I could think of would be that people wouldn’t have to gather around the same display and they could make changes for everyone to see more easily.
Now, a bit more than one and a half minutes into the video, things really start to get more interesting. Mival demonstrates how the interactive table can be used to spin around 3D objects, play games and scan maps. The table seems to be capable of many things, and I believe it would really help in making meetings more interactive and fluent.
There is almost no doubt in that these kinds of futuristic meeting rooms would make working more efficient. However, it is certain that the rooms will require lots of money, so the only real question would be if these improvements are enough to make these kinds of meeting rooms a beneficial investment.
References
http://vimeo.com/8238997
http://www.futureinteractions.net/
The problem with the demonstration was that they didn't seem to be doing anything useful with the room or the equipment. Basically just moving, rotating and zooming bunch of photos. I bet there are many advantages in the room compared to a regular meeting room but the video failed to demonstrate them properly.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the latter half of the video was more interesting and I really liked the choice of music (RJD2) :)
If you're interested about pervasive technology of the future in a room environment, search info about Bill Gatesses house...
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, when considering the mushrooming of these advanced co-work solutions, the greatest obstacle is the lack of tasks that really demand concerted effort: Most of the work is always done independently and asynchronously, even if the coordination is done by CSCW.
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