Mediaspaces have been designed to facilitate informal communication and support group awareness while assuring privacy protection. However, low bandwidth communication is a source of undesirable discontinuities in such systems, resulting in a loss of peripheral awareness. In addition, privacy is often implemented as an accessibility matrix coupled to an all-or-nothing exposure of personal state. In this article, we describe CoMedi, a mediaspace prototype that addresses the problem of discontinuity and privacy in an original way: computer vision and speech recognition are used in conjunction to minimize visual discontinuities while supporting free movements in a room. Privacy is maintained by publication filters at the desired level of transparency.
['Joëlle Coutaz', 'François Bérard', 'Eric Carraux', 'James L. Crowley']
Early Experience with the Mediaspace CoMedi