Reconsidering the Virtual Workplace: Flexible Support for Collaborative Activity

Abstract

Despite the substantial corpus of research concerned with the design and development of media space, the virtual workplace has failed to achieve its early promise. In this paper, we suggest that a number of problems which have arisen with the design and deployment of media space, derive from their impoverished concept of collaborative work. Drawing from our own studies of video connectivity, coupled with analyses of work and interaction in real-world settings, we consider ways in which we might reconfigure media space in order to provide more satisfactory support for collaboration in organisational environments.