Beyond the Desktop Metaphor

Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments

MIT Press

The computer's metaphorical desktop, with its onscreen windows and
hierarchy of folders, is the only digital work environment most users and designers
have ever known. Yet empirical studies show that the traditional desktop design does
not provide sufficient support for today's real-life tasks involving collaboration,
multitasking, multiple roles, and diverse technologies. In Beyond the Desktop
Metaphor, leading researchers and developers consider design approaches for a
post-desktop future.The contributors analyze the limitations of the desktop
environment--including the built-in conflict between access and display, the
difficulties in managing several tasks simultaneously, and the need to coordinate
the multiple technologies and information objects (laptops, PDAs, files, URLs,
email) that most people use daily--and propose novel design solutions that work
toward a more integrated digital work environment. They describe systems that
facilitate access to information, including Lifestreams, Haystack, Task Factory,
GroupBar, and Scalable Fabric, and they argue that the organization of work
environments should reflect the social context of work. They consider the notion of
activity as a conceptual tool for designing integrated systems, and point to the
Kimura and Activity-Based Computing systems as examples.Beyond the Desktop Metaphor
is the first systematic overview of state-of-the-art research on integrated digital
work environments. It provides a glimpse of what the next generation of information
technologies for everyday use may look like--and it should inspire design solutions
for users' real-world needs.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaptelinin, Victor

Czerwinski, Mary

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Management Wissensmanagement
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Informatik Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion

Über Autor(innen)

Czerwinski, Mary
Mary Czerwinski is a Principal Researcher and Manager in the Visualization and
Interaction Research Group at Microsoft Research and adjunct faculty member in
Psychology at the University of Washington.

Kaptelinin, Victor
Victor Kaptelinin is Professor in the Department of Informatics at Umeå
University, Sweden, and Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media
Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is coeditor of Beyond the
Desktop Metaphor: Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments (MIT
Press, 2007).