Re-P1ace-ing Space: The Roles of Place

Collaborative Systemsand Space in

Steve Harrison

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center3333 Coyote Hill Road

Palo AltoCA 94304 USA

harrison(llparc.xerox.com

ABSTRACTMany collaborative and communicative environments usenotions of “space” and spatial organisation to facilitate andstructure interaction. We argue that a focus on spatial modelsis misplaced. Drawing on understandings from architectureand urban design, as well as from our own research findings,we highlight the critical distinction between “space” and“place”. While designers use spatial models to support inter-action, we show how it is actually a notion of “place” whichfram-es interactive behaviour. This leads us to re-evaluatespatial systems, and discuss how “place”, rather than“space”, can support CSCW design.

Keywords: space, place, media space, virtual reality,MUDS, metaphor.

INTRODUCTION

We live in a three-dimensional world. The structure of thespace around us moulds and guides our actions and interac-tions. With years of experience, we are all highly skilled atstructuring and interpreting space for our individual or inter-active purposes. For instance:

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The objects we work with most often are generallyarranged closest to us. Computer keyboards, current doc-uments, common reference materials and favouritepieces of music might immediately surround us in anoffice, while other materials are kept further away (in fil-ing cabinets, cupboards or libraries).

Physical spaces are structured according to uses andneeds for interaction. An office door can be closed togive independence from the space outside, or left open tolet us see passers-by. People’s offices are more likely tobe sited near to the offices of their colleagues.

Observing the way that space structures actions and interac-tions—the “affordances” of space [19]—many designershave used spatial models and metaphors in collaborative sys-tems. The desktop metaphor of single-user systems has beenextended to a metaphor of desks, offices, hallways and cities.These systems all facilitate natural collaboration by exploit-

Permission to make di~itslhmd coDies of all or oart of this material forpersonsl or classroom;se is granh-d without fee’provided that the copiesafe not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copy-right notice, the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice isgiven that copyright is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise,to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to tists, requires specificpermission and/or fee.

Paul Dourish

Apple Research Laboratories1 Infinite Loop MS: 301-4UE

CupertinoCA 95014 USA

jpd@research.apple. com

ing our understandings of space—the properties of the three-dimensional world in which we live and interact every day.

In this paper, we will critically explore the use of space as abasis for CSCW design. We will argue that the critical prop-erty which designers are seeking, which we call appropriatebehavioral framing, is not rooted in the properties of spaceat all. Instead, it is rooted in sets of mutually-held, and mutu-ally available, cultural understandings about behaviour andaction. In contrast to “space”, we call this a sense of “place”.Our principle is: “Space is the opportunity; place is theunderstood reality”.

Place is a fundamental concept in architecture and urbandesign, and we can learn from those disciplines how to thinkabout place in collaborative systems. Place derives from atension between connectedness and distinction, rather thanfrom three-dimensional structure, and we can see this atwork in a variety of collaborative systems.

We will begin, in the next section, by looking at the currentuse of space in collaborative systems, and how it is exploitedto structure interaction. Next, we will introduce the relatednotion of place, and compare their roles in existing systemsand consequences for future designs.

SPACE IN COLLABORATIVE SYSTEMSThe use of spatial metaphors and spatial organisation hasbecome increasingly popular in collaborative systems overthe past few years. We will describe some systems, and thenlook at the properties they exhibit.

Spatially-based SystemsCollaborative Virtual Reality. Most demonstrably, experi-ments with collaborative virtual reality systems, such asDIVE [9] and MASSIVE [23], use virtual spaces to managedistributed multi-user interaction. Both of these systems usea “spatial model of interaction” [5], in which participants’awareness of each other, and opportunities for interaction,are managed through spatial extensions of their presence,attention and influence called “aura”, “focus” and “nimbus”.These mechanisms are designed as computational equiva-lents of real-world patterns of awareness and interaction inthese virtual spaces. Related mechanisms extend these inter-factional spaces for collaborative work, such as collaborativeinformation retrieval [30], using spatial metaphors to visua-lise users in an information landscape.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work ’96, Cambridge MA USA‘@1996 ACM o+979 l-7(j5_o/96/l 1 ..$3.50

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MUDS. At the other end of the technology spectrum, theexplosion of interest in the Internet has been accompanied bya huge increase in the popularity of MUDS and MOOS [11];text-based (or simple graphical) interactive environments.Collaborative systems based on these technologies [e.g. 12]have also emphasised the use of “real-world” spatial meta-phors to support collaboration. MUDS structure their virtualworlds into separate locations (“rooms”), and allow partici-pants to move from location to location, selectivelyparticipating in events, activities and conversations. The spa-tial metaphor runs all the way through the MUD model ofaction and interaction.

Multimedia Communications. The same principles have alsobeen at work in other communicative systems. Like collabo-rative virtual realities, these have drawn upon analogies withthe spatial organisation of the everyday physical world tostructure aspects of multi-user interaction. For example, theoriginal design of the Cruiser media space system [29] useda metaphor of “virtual hallways” as an organizing principlefor interaction and participation in an AV-mediated commu-nication system. The Vrooms system at EuroPARC [6] usedspatial proximity in an interface to control connections; andrecent work on the Toronto Telepresence project has intro-duced multiple cameras into a single media space node toreflect the notion of different views from the office doorwayor across the desk of a colleague [8].

The basic premise which lies behind these varied uses of spa-tial models and metaphors is that, in collaborative settings,designers can exploit our familiarity with the spatial organi-sation of our everyday physical environments. In particular,they wish to exploit the ways that space structures and orga-nises activity and interaction.

The Features of SpaceThere are many aspects of the “real world” which can beexploited as part of a spatial model for collaboration:

Relational orientation and reciprocity. The spatial organisa-tion of the world is the same for all of us. “Down” is towardsthe center of the earth, and “up” is towards the sky; we rec-ognise “front” and “back”, and understand what that impliesfor our field-of-view. Our common orientation to the physi-cal world is an invaluable resource in presenting andinterpreting activity and behaviour. Since we know that theworld is physically structured for others in just the same wayas it is for ourselves, we can use this understanding to orientour own behaviour for other people’s use. This is what letsus point to objects, or use spatial descriptions to establish ref-erence. Referring to “the document on top of that pile” or“the person standing by the bookcase” relies on mutual spa-tial orientation. Reference can also depend on our shared

experience of what it’s like to be in a space, such as when wetell someone, “the door is on the left just as you come aroundthe corner”.

Proximity and action. In the everyday world, we act (more orless) where we are. We pickup objects that are near us, notat a distance; we talk to people around us, because our voicesonly travel a short distance; we carry things with us; and weget closer to things to view them clearly. Similar propertiesare exploited in collaborative virtual spaces. Understandings

of proximity help us to relate people to activities and to eachother. When we see a group of people gathered around ameeting table, we understand something about their activity,and we know that another person standing off to one side islikely to be less involved in their activity.

Partitioning. Following on from the notion of proximity andactivity is a notion of partitioning. Since actions and interac-tions fall off with distance, so distance can be used topartition activities and the extent of interaction. MUD sys-tems, for example, use rooms or locations to partitionactivity. MUD rooms provide a restricted view into the set ofinteractions currently in progress in the system overall.

Presence and awareness. As we move around the everydayworld, it is filled not only with the artifacts, tools and repre-sentations of our work, but also with other people and withsigns of their activity. The sense of other people’s presenceand the ongoing awareness of activity allows us to structureour own activity, seamlessly integrating communication andcollaboration ongoingly and unproblematically. Similarly,spatially-organised collaborative environments presentviews of other people and their actions within the same envi-ronment which represents activity and holds the artifacts ofwork.

APPROPRIATE BEHAVIORAL FRAMINGThe real-world value of the features listed above is that theygive critical cues which allow us to organise our behaviourappropriately (such as moving towards people to talk tothem, or referring to objects so that others can find them).Collaborative virtual spaces exploit aspects of space (spatialmechanisms, such as providing identity, orientation, a locusfor activity, and a mode of control) which can be powerfultools for the design. But these spatial metaphors carry withthem some decidedly non-metaphoric aspects—spatialbehaviours—that emerge from our everyday experience ofthe physical world.

So, what is being supported by spatial collaborative modelsis a way of ongoingly managing activity in collaborative set-tings. We call this appropriate behavioral framing. Theimplied rationale is that if we design collaborative systemsaround notions of space which mimic the spatial organisa-tion of the real world, then we can support the emergentpatterns of human behaviour and interaction which oureveryday actions in the physical world exhibit. In otherwords, spatially-organised systems will support spatially-managed behaviors.

Our argument here is that this model is too simplistic. Itneeds to be examined and studied further before it can be putto use in systems design.

FROM SPACE TO PLACEThe properties outlined above define the notion of “space”which we will use in this paper. Space is the structure of theworld; it is the three-dimensional environment in whichobjects and events occur, and in which they have relativeposition and direction. The properties of space are thosewhich derive from that definition, as we showed above.

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We argued that features of space have been exploited bysystem developers in the attempt to regain the sense ofappropriate behavioral framing which we observe andencounter in the real world. However, in everyday action,this appropriate behavioral framing comes not from a senseof space, but from a sense of place. Our key principledescribes the relationship between the two: Space is theopportunity; place is the understood reality.

So, what is place and what does it do for us?

Place and Behavioral FramingPhysically, a place is a space which is invested with under-standings of behavioral appropriateness, culturalexpectations, and so forth. We are located in “space”, but weact in “place”. Furthermore, “places” are spaces that are val-ued. The distinction is rather like that between a “house” anda “home”; a house might keep out the wind and the rain, buta home is where we live.

A conference hall and a theatre share many similar spatialfeatures (such as lighting and orientation); and yet we rarelysing or dance when presenting conference papers, and to doso would be regarded as at least slightly odd (or would needto be explained). We wouldn’ t describe this behaviour as“out of space”; but it would most certainly be “out of place”;and this feeling is so strong that we might try quite hard tointerpret a song or a dance as part of a presentation, if facedwith it suddenly. It is a sense of place, not space, whichmakes it appropriate to dance at a Grateful Dead concert, butnot at a Cambridge college high table; to be naked in the bed-room, but not in the street; and to sit at our windows peeringout, rather than at other people’s windows peering in. Place,not space, frames appropriate behaviour.

Conversely, the same location—with no changes in its spa-tial organisation or layout—may function as different placesat different times. An office might act, at different times, asa place for contemplation, meetings, intimate conversationand sleep. So a place may be more specific than a space. Aspace is always what it is, but a place is how it’s used.

Place is Zn SpaceOne reason that it can be hard to see the separation betweenplace and space is that, in our everyday experience, placeslargely exist within spaces. (Later, however, we willdescribe some space-less places.) A place is generally aspace with something added—social meaning, convention,cultural understandings about role, function and nature andso on. The sense of place transforms the space. As a space,the brick porch outside EuroPARC where smokers gather isuninviting; but it is valued as a place for relaxation and gos-sip. It’s still a space, even though place is what matters.

Since our world is spatial and three-dimensional, notions ofspace pervade our everyday experience. Everything in ourworld is located in space, and so “place” is tied up with it too.It is part of the very metaphoric structure of our language.Tuan [32] points out that even spatial relations are loadedwith meaning, with “high” being good and “low” being bad.Lakoff and Johnson [25] label this an “orientational meta-phor” and give a long list of examples. Spatiality runs

throughout our experience and our thought. Places derivemuch of their meaning, then, from their spatiality.

However, the sense of place is dependent on much more thansimply the spatial organisation of our surroundings, andmore than the three-dimensional arrangement of artifacts.Places also call up cultural understandings which help us toframe our behaviour.

Place in Social AnalysisAnalysts of social action have been concerned with notionsof place, and with the settings which convey cultural mean-ing and frame behaviour. Goffman [22] uses a theatricalmetaphor, where “frontstage” and “backstage” distinguishdifferent modes of behaviour and action in interpersonalinteraction. He points explicitly to “regions” as one of theelements which contributes to the framing of these differentstyles of action. However, behaviour can be framed as muchby the presence of other individuals as by the location itselfiin other words, the “place” is more than simply a point inspace.

Giddens [21] adopts the term “locales” to capture a similarsense of behavioral framing. Again, these are more thansimply spaces; he observes, “it is usually possible to desig-nate locales in terms of their physical properties ... but it is anerror to suppose that locales can be described in those termsalone.” For Giddens, again, the critical feature of these set-tings is the way in which “features of settings are [...] used,in a routine manner, to constitute the meaningful content ofinteraction”. In other words, what these analysts point to inhuman action is how it is framed not only by spaces, but bythe pattern of understandings, associations and expectationswith which they are infused.

Place in the Built EnvironmentPlace, as we have described it here, is a central concern forarchitects and urban designers. For example, Wbyte [33]provides detailed descriptions of the life of the street in amodern city. His comprehensive descriptions of the use ofthe street-side plazas highlight the issues between placeswhich “work” and those which do not; whether or not peoplewant to be there. Similarly, while Christopher Alexander’s“patterns” [3] ostensibly describe principles of physicaldesign, the focus is lesson the structure of buildings and cit-ies, and more on the living which goes on in them. Hecomments, “Those of us who are concerned with buildingstend to forget too easily that all the life and soul of a place,all of our experiences there, depend not simply on the phys-ical environment, but on the pattern of events which weexperience there” [2].

So, architects and urban designers are concerned not simplywith designing three-dimensional structures (spaces), butwith places for people to be. For them, the idea of placederives from a tension between connectedness anddistinction.

Connectedness is the degree to which a place fits with its sur-roundings, maintaining a pattern in the surroundingenvironment (such as color, material or form+r respond-ing to those patterns, even if it does not maintain the patterns

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explicitly. It is when these relationships are broken downthat we say that something is “out of place”.

One measure of placeness is the degree to which a place rein-forces-or even defines—the pattern of its context. But to bea place is also to be distinct from its context. How is it pos-sible for a place to be both “part of’ and “apart from” itscontext? The tension is addressed by defining the distinctive-ness of a place in terms of the surrounding context— andvice versa.

This model of place, in the tension between connectednessand distinction, will turn out to be a valuable way to thinkabout and design places in computational space as well asphysical space. First, though, we will present work frommedia spaces, to illustrate the distinction between place andspace, and to ask, how do we make spaces into places?

MAKING A PLACE IN MEDIA SPACEWe have experimented with these ideas of space and place inresearch over the last ten years into “media spaces” [7, 18].Media spaces integrate audio, video and computer technol-ogy to provide a rich, malleable infrastructure for workgroupcommunication across time and space. This work-espe-cially recent reports bringing a long-term perspective [e.g.16, 24], presented in examples below—vividly illustrate thedistinction between place and space.

It’s no accident that these experimental audio-video environ-ments are called Media Spaces, not Media Places. Placenessis created and sustained by patterns of use; it’s not somethingwe can design in. On the other hand, placeness is what wewant to support; we can design for it. Media spaces wereintended to provide the structure from which placeness couldarise, just as places arise out of the space around us. Theywere not designed as places themselves, but for people tomake places in them.

To understand how this works, we need to spend some timethinking about how people turn a space into a place.

Adaptation and AppropriationOne critical element in the emergence of a sense of place andappropriate behaviour is support for adaptation and appro-priation of the technology by user communities. This appliesto physical places as well as technological ones. We make ahouse into a home by arranging it to suit our lives, and put-ting things there which reflect ourselves. People make placesin media spaces with just the same ideas of adaptation andappropriation. Like tacking pictures to the walls, rearrangingthe furniture or placing personal artifacts around a room,these are the ways that people can turn a space into a place.

Example: Linking Public SpacesAs an example, consider the very different experiences oftwo seemingly similar uses of video to link public spaces,one at Xerox (reported by Olson and Bly [27]), and one atBellcore (reported by Fish et al. [17]).

Both experiments linked public spaces in R&D office envi-ronments with audio and video, to foster informalcommunication. However, the groups had very differentexperiences of the successes and failures of their connec-tions. The Bellcore researchers were disappointed with their

results, concluding that “the current VideoWindow systemlacks something due to factors we do not understand” [17,p.9]; the PARC researchers concluded “the media spaceoffered something wonderful to those of us who experiencedthe Palo Alto-Portland link” [7, p. 45].

We believe that one critical factor contributing to the verydifferent patterns of use is this ability to participate, adaptand appropriate. In these experiments, the differences hadtheir roots in the technology used. The Xerox link used rela-tively inexpensive cameras, which were mounted onwheeled tripods. Anyone could pick them up, move themaround and play with them—and many people did. On theother hand, the Bellcore system used a prototype wide-scancamera array and video projection system. The equipmentwas designed to simulate copresence as closely as possible,with high-quality video and audio, and life-size images.However, the result was that the forbidding equipment, com-plex and delicate to configure, could not be appropriated byits users. It wasn’ t theirs, and they could not make ittheirs.This separation between users and technology could be seento inhibit the community’s adoption of the technology.

It is only over time, and with active participation and appro-priation, that a sense of place begins to permeate thesesystems. The sense of place must be forged by the users; itcannot be inherent in the system itself. Space is the opportu-nity, and place is the understood reality. Just as spaceprovides the underlying opportunity for a media space,place-making provides its realities.

Since the sense of place takes time to develop within a com-munity, we look for it in studies of long-term use. A numberof studies of “virtual shared offices” linked by video andaudio over the long-term (periods of two or three years) pointto the emergence of place-centric behaviors and character-istics [1, 16]. We found that new patterns of behaviouremerged, not only between the “direct” participants—thosewhose offices were linked by the media space—but also,critically, by others in physical or organisational proximity.We will discuss this further in our section on “HybridSpaces”

PLACE AS A CULTURAL PHENOMENONWe have been developing the idea of a sense of place—acommunally-held sense of appropriate behaviour, and a con-text for engaging in and interpreting action. This isessentially a cultural phenomenon.

These understandings develop within cultures, and learningthem is part of our assimilation and socialisation. Like newmembers of any culture, new arrivals in our media spaceslearn the cultural norms and mores of the media space envi-

ronments, as part of their enculturation into the workplacesand organisations where they are situated. These norms varyfrom place to place. For example, Dourish [14] details thevarying views of media space activity in different researchenvironments, and shows how these have influenced thedevelopment of the technologies. Similarly, as culturalunderstandings drift, change and are forged anew, we see thesense of appropriate behaviour change as well.

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One illustrative example of cultural understandings ofappropriate behaviour in media spaces lies in the varyingapproaches which have arisen around concerns of privacyand control.

Privacy Concerns in Media SpacesQuite rightly, much time and effort, including much of ourown, has been devoted to these concerns [4, 10, 13]. It’simportant to note, though, that the solutions to these prob-lems, which arise in situ to address local concerns, aredifferent in every setting [14]. Concerns about privacy, aboutthe balance between control and availability, and potentialapproaches to tackling the problems, are not absolute. Theyarise in a mesh of cultural, personal and organisational issuesin different locations, and so we see the nature and scope ofsolutions vary widely to reflect this.

We don’t raise this to dismiss concerns with privacy in mul-timedia environments—far from it—or even to classify themas purely “local” problems. Instead, we want to draw atten-tion to the relationship between ways of acting and behavingand the patterns of cultural associations.

The kinds of ideas generally raised in discussions of privacyin media spaces are, themselves, cultural understandings.Privacy has been a major concern for critics of media spaceand designers of related projects. However, in general, thedebate has not been conducted with a rich view of the mean-ing of privacy. A place-centric view emphasizes importantdistinctions: privacy is not the same as private events, nor isit a direct consequence of private places; and in contrast,being seen or even heard is not absolutely and inevitablypublic.

The Social Construction of PrivacyThere are many dimensions to the notion of “privacy’’-con-venience, turf, control of embarrassment, and control ofinformation. But let us start with the kind of privacy thatmost people think of first, a relatively recent invention inEuropean cultures, Consider the bedroom. Today, we com-monly think of the bedroom as a private place. We believethat the activities we associate with it should be visually andacoustically segregated from other people and other activi-ties. The bedroom is a place of intimacy, and is emblematicof the concept of privacy. 1 This was not always so. The bed-room dates from the end of the Middle Ages when Europewas in a mini-ice age. Up until then, people ate and slepttogether in large groups in a single room. Then someoneinvented the bed. It raised bodies off the cold drafty floor andseparated people from one another. Enclosing canopies wereadded that made tent-like rooms and created separate placesfor the now separated sleepers; these tent-like rooms evolvedinto bedrooms.

It is difficult to say whether the concept that is now calledprivacy was an unfulfilled desire waiting for these inventionsor the by-product of keeping warm and displaying status. Inany case, the roots of privacy are in physical form, not in an

1. Lerup [26] notes that television “soap operas” often set action inbedrooms when characters share intimate thoughts. The bedroomis an icon for the private and the personal.

abstract notion of the control of others’ visual access to one-self and one’s property. (Of course, this is not how we see ittoday.) Privacy is relative, not a set of psychological primi-tives. Technology (such as walls, doors or permission lists)is not the only way to create privacy, nor is it enough byitself, Social convention gives meaning to the act of visualseparation. For example, the PARC Media Space is rooted inthe open studio of the architectural office, a place where pri-vacy has a different meaning and is created and used indifferent ways than in the closed spaces of research officesor the bedrooms of today. The RAVE media space at Euro-PARC emerged with a different set of technological andorganisational aesthetics, and manifests a different view ofprivacy again, rooted in a “service” model rather than an“open access” one [14].

Cultural and Technological StructureThe identification of “placeness” as a cultural phenome-non—or, at least, one rooted in human social action—resultsin a critical implication for the design of collaborative sys-tems and technologies. It shifts our focus away from thetechnology of place, since that technology--doors, walls andspatial distance-only gives rise to “placeness” through theway in which it is given social meaning.

Office doors in our workplaces are typically left open, butsome doors carry signs to explain that they’ re closed to keepout noise, not visitors. The presence of these signs empha-sises the relationship between technology and social cues.They reinforce the social meaning (availability) even in thepresence of conflicting physical configurations (the closeddoor). Technological configurations of private places andquiet ones are the same; they are distinguished by socialaction, not spatial structure.

The relationship between space and place is social, not tech-nological. CSCW tools and technologies create new socialplaces, based on the ways in which their users ascribe newsocial meanings to new technological features. This observa-tion raises important questions for design. Carrying overtechnological arrangements which ape the real world, suchas spatial organisation, might give us a convenient short-hand for establishing shared social meaning; but is it reallythe most appropriate means? And, furthermore, doesn’t itlimit the ways in which individuals and groups can adopt andcreatively appropriate the technologies to create their ownnew meanings?

In the next two sections, we will explore these questions inmore detail. In particular, we will explore the relationshipbetween space and place—their dependence and interac-tion—by looking at two complex forms of places: space-lessplaces and hybrid physicalhirtual spaces.

COMPLEX FORMS: SPACE-LESS PLACESThe distinction between “space” and “place” is perhaps moststrongly demonstrated by examples of the emergence ofplace without notions of space. Earlier, we introduced theconcept of place as space invested with social meaning. Thespaces can be computational, as well as physical. Whatremains is the tension between connectedness and distinc-tion which leads to peacefulness. As our first “complex

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form”, we present two examples in this section of platefulcollaborative action without a model of physical space.

Plateful Discussion without Physical SpaceOne obvious source of such examples are USENET newsgroups and Internet mailing lists. The technology of eachUSENET group is exactly the same, and yet the resultantgroups exhibit very different notions of place. It’s not simplythat they separate discussion into topics, making certainpostings appropriate to one group or another; but that theyalso make distinctions between styles of posting. Neophytequeries may be more or less appropriate, depending on theculture of the group; so are flames. These styles are relativelyindependent of topic. Complaints about spelling or grammat-ical errors are acceptable (or even encouraged) inalt.peeves, but they would be inappropriate in comp.pro-

tocols. tcp–ip.

The different groups serve different purposes to overlappingconstituencies and communities; and they exhibit differentsocial norms. They’re different places. This placeness buildsupon the tension between connectedness and distinctionwhich we raised earlier; but, critically, it emerges without anunderlying notion of space.

Plateful Navigation without Physical SpaceDourish and Chalmers [15] discuss various models of navi-gation through information, and draw distinctions between“spatial”, “semantic” and “social” navigation. Social naviga-tion is navigation through information collections on thebasis of information derived from the activity of others. Thisis a particular case which spatially-based models aim to sup-port [30]; drawing on the relationship between proximity andactivity discussed in section two, these systems allow usersto move to areas where others are clustered, to join the crowdand see what’s going on. However, as Dourish and Chalmersillustrate, similar patterns of social navigation also occurthrough “personal hotlists” on the World Wide Web, as wellas through interest-matching systems such as Ringo/HOMRand GroupLens [28, 31]. Again, this demonstrates that place-based behaviour doesn’t need space to underpin it.

The behaviors exhibited here—varieties in conversationalstructure, and navigation according to others’ interests—arethe same sorts of behaviors which spatial models try to sup-port. However, as in the examples from our media spaceexperiences, we find that these are not spatially-organisedafter all; they show people responding to places, not spaces.

COMPLEX FORMS: HYBRID SPACESOur second complex form is the hybrids of physical and vir-tual space which technology can create, and the places whichemerge.

When we observe the emergence of a sense of place in mediaspace, a distinction arises between “spatial” features that thetechnology might provide—visual access, proximity, move-ment—and the place-oriented aspects of interaction whichmight arise there—formal and informal discussion, inti-macy, a sense of ownership, and so forth.

A key feature of interactions in media spaces (or, more par-ticularly here, interaction over particular connections

established in media spaces) is that they take place in hybridspaces. A hybrid space is one which is comprises both phys-ical and virtual space, and in action is framedsimulataneously by the physical space, the virtual space andthe relationship between the two. These tend to be lesscommon in other related (non-media-space) systems. Forexample, when my avatar enters a virtual collaborative envi-ronment, then not only is the environment (the space thesystem creates) virtual, but what is projected into that space(my avatar) is virtual too. On the other hand, in a mediaspace, while the “space” (the connection between two peo-ple) is virtual, the projections are not. What I project into amedia space connection is a view of me (the real me) and myoffice (a physical space). My actions and behaviour in myreal space are visible in the media space; but in the virtualsystem, I act only by remotely manipulating myrepresentation.

The reason that this distinction between projection and rep-resentation works is that the media space connection reachesout to encompass everything in front of the camera. Sothere’s more in the connection than simply the “virtualspace” of the two monitors. When two offices are linkedtogether in a media space, then a hybrid space is created; itinvolves not only the virtual space of the media connection,but also the real physical space of the two offices.

Acting in Hybrid SpacesDourish et al. [16] detail a range of experiences arising outof their experiences with very long-term, semi-permanentaudio and video connections (“office-shares”) between par-ticular offices. Since these connections were in place for along time—at least two years, day-in and day-out—the userscould observe transformations which the connections intro-duced, not just in their own behaviour but, critically, in thebehaviour of other colleagues in organisational and physicalproximity too.

Two examples particularly illustrate the importance ofhybrid space in these connections.

Shared Ofice Etiquette. In the first, two office-share partic-ipants observed a “shared office etiquette” arise amongstvisitors to their offices. When someone arrived in the door-way or office of one participant to talk to him or her, theywould begin their interaction by greeting not only the localparticipant, but also their remote partner, “present” acrossthe audio and video link. In other words, visitors wouldbehave in either office—a physical space—as if it were partof a shared office. Neither physical space was shared by twopersons, but the shared place which they occupied, andwhich was acknowledged by visitors, was formed from thehybrid of physical and virtual space in the office-shareconfiguration.

Seeing Out the Door. The second example involves a recon-figuration of physical space for the purposes of managingcommunication in the hybrid space. When one of the con-nections was first set up, the cameras were pointed directlyat the office-sharers, so each participant could see the otherand their immediate working area. However, because of theway one office was laid out, one of the cameras was placedon the end of a desk between the office’s occupant and the

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door. As a result, the view of that office available in themedia space was rather like the view into the office from thedoorway. While this gave the remote participant a view ofthe local office inhabitant, it did not provide a view of thedoorway, or into the space beyond which meant that theremote participant could not see people who arrived in theoffice, or who passed by outside. This turned out to be animportant facility.

After a few months, the local inhabitant of this office volun-tarily re-organised it, turning it around 180°. This allowedthe remote participant to see not only the office’s occupant,but also the doorway (and people standing in it) as well as thepublic space outside the office. This hugely improved thesevital hybrid interactions with office visitors and passers-by(raising interesting questions of ownership and control).

The Structure of Hybrid SpacesThe hybrid nature of media space connections is a criticalaspect of their use. This is why, for instance, media spacesand collaborative virtual environments do fundamentallydifferent things. Whereas I must enter a virtual environment(be it a 3-D rendered virtual reality, or a text-based MUD), Iuse the media space to create a new, hybrid space whichincludes real, physical me.

One of the curious properties of media space is that a placecan be made of hybrid spaces. Two people can be in whatthey think of as the same place (like an electronically sharedoffice), but will not be in the same physical space, nor evenwill they be the same hybrid space. My image on your mon-itor does not interact with your image on my monitor,although we can say that we each interact with the other.Each of us is in a separate space; linked, but not shared. Inthis section, we will talk in more detail about the structure ofhybrid spaces, and how to decompose it.

It is not only the structure of the space which we have todecompose. It’s very easy to blindly talk about “audio andvideo” in media spaces as if they were equivalent media, per-forming the same sort of function. However, when we takethe place-centric view—and as we have seen, it’s the place-centric view which affects how people communicate andbehave—then we can see that audio and video actually pro-vide very different sorts of functions.

Virtual Acoustic Spaces

The critical feature of the “virtual acoustic space” which amedia space can create is that it is all-pervasive. It fills thephysical space in a way which an image cannot. There aretwo aspects to this.

First, audio reaches out to encompass the participants; notjust those connected, but those around and passing through.The “open audio” aspect of the long-term media space con-nections described by Dourish et al. was critical to their usefor just this reason, and was a highly significant contributionto what they refer to as “communal” aspects of theirconnection.

Second, the audio space is truly shared; we each speak andhear in the same audio space. The sound of my voice carriesover the audio connection and invades your space; it doesn’t

stay in a fixed place until you attend to it. The space whichthe audio channel creates is one which we share.

Virtual Visual Spaces

In contrast, visual space is not shared, but simply madeavailable. The image of my office which my camera sendsout, and which is displayed on your monitor, remains myimage. It carries with it the context in which it was captured,and at your end, it is framed and bounded by the monitor.You can’t be in it, or walk around in it. You see me, in myspace, and I see you, in yours; but neither of us sees the twoof us, together, in a shared visual space.

This non-shared aspect of visual space is reflected byGaver’s [19] “affordance” analysis of media spaces. Anumber of the points illustrated there (and subsequentlydeveloped in later design work [20]) arise because it is notyour space which enters mine, but your image.

The value and interesting use of media space connectionswhich we have observed lies in the balance between thesefeatures—the shared nature of the audio space, the translo-cated nature of the visual space, and the melding of virtualand physical space which the media space affords.

We disrupt this balance at our peril. For instance, technologyis available to let us digitally process the images from ourcameras, and reconstruct them to make it appear that wewere sitting across from each other at a virtual “conferencetable”. We would be being presented in a shared visualspace. However, this space would belong to neither of us; itwould convey nothing about our current settings and actions;and would cut out anyone else who happened by in physicalspace. It would be a very different sort of experience. In thesearch for realism, the practical everyday value of interac-tion in the media space’s hybrid space would have been lost.

DESIGNING AROUND SPACE AND PLACEAs we have gone through this discussion, a number of pointshave arisen which are worth collecting together as rubrics fordesign.

Spaces are notplaces. Spaces and places are different things.We can all think of lifeless spaces in our buildings and cities;spaces that “don’ t work”, that have no sense of place2.Spaces are part of the material out of which places can bebuilt. Dealing with physical structure, topology, orientationand connectedness, spaces offer opportunities and con-straints. Places, on the other hand, reflect cultural and socialunderstandings. Places can also have temporal properties;the same space can be different places at different times.While spaces have up and down, left and right, places haveyesterday and tomorrow, good and bad.

Places, not spaces, frame appropriate behaviour. Much ofthe motivation for spatially-organised collaborative environ-ments is that they can provide the cues which frame andorganise appropriate social behaviour in the real world.However, that behaviour is not associated with space, butwith place. A community hall might, on different evenings ina week, be used as a rock venue, a sports arena, and a place

2. One reviewer commented, “Yes! The Stanford quad!”

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of worship. On these different occasions, it’s not the struc-ture of the ~pace which frames people’s behaviour, but theplace where they find themselves.

Places have social meaning. The meanings which placescarry are social meanings; they are rooted in the practicesand understandings of communities. They arise over timethrough as practices emerge and are transformed within thegroups. This has two consequences. The first is that differentgroups will have different understandings of similar placesand similar concepts, and these will change over time. Thesecond is that places have to be created, through practice andappropriation, to fit into the culture of the group. Placenesscan be designed for, but it can’t be designed in.

Different media have dl~erent spatial properties. The vari-ous media which we might use in creating collaborativeenvironments—streams of text or graphics, high-quality 3Dimages, audio, video, etc.—exhibit very different properties,and these properties in turn strongly influence patterns ofuse, adoption and adaptation to media environments. Forinstance, in the case of media spaces, we illustrated howaudio and video embody very different notions of “reach”and of “sharing”.

Our basic principle, stated earlier, captures all of thesetogether, and relates the distinction between place and spaceto our everyday experience: Space is the opportuni~; placeis the understood reality.

The Utility of Space and PlaceThe question we must always ask in thinking about design isnot simply what aspects of space are being exploited in thesesystems, but to what end are they being used? By way of con-trast, one significant area of research interest around spatialmodels in interactive systems is to visualise large bodies ofinformation. Information visualization techniques shift partof the information retrieval task from the cognitive to theperceptual system. Although the popularity of spatial meta-phors in collaborative environments follows their popularityin single-user interactive systems, the purposes are very dif-ferent. But we can still ask analogously, “What is it that isbeing made perceptible in collaborative spatial models?”

Place-making, then, would appear to be a complex enter-prise. It reflects the conscious arrangement of elements tocreate a space that accommodates activity, and (here is thehard part) the interplay of reflective design and happenstanceto give expression to the values of the occupants and theirwider community. In other words, as we have observed, aspace can only be made a place by its occupants. The bestthat the designers can do is to put the tools into their hands.Trying to do more—trying to build places—is not our job.

Let us now take a look at how this is and is not carried out inone kind of collaborative system, and how space and placeinteract.

MUDS: Designing with Space and PlaceThrough this paper, we have been talking largely in terms ofmedia spaces. Not only are these the environments withwhich we are most familiar, but they have also been in usefor longer than many other collaborative environments.

However, it is instructive to look at another example, to seehow the ideas we have been discussing apply. The examplewhich we will look at, loosely, is MUDS.

MUDS employ a strong spatial analogy to manage multi-userinteraction. Connected regions (or “rooms”) serve as a filter-ing mechanism; my view of the activities currently inprogress in the MUD is largely restricted to those activitiesin the same room. Different MUDS (not just different imple-mentations, but different services, run by different people)exploit this “real-world” analogy to a greater or lesser extent;for instance, in some systems, characters can “teleport” fromone room to another, whereas in others, one must walk to thedestination, passing through the points in between.

However, it’s a curious sense of geography which MUDSexhibit. They have topology (connectedness) but no orienta-tion; there is generally no real notion of up, down, north,south, back and forward (except in the names of the exitswhich link rooms). Meantime, most MUDS have no notionof space within a room; I can’ t be closer to one character thananother, or hide behind the sofa.

So, in fact, MUDS do not exhibit the spatially-based controlwhich might seem central to them, and which is oftenappealed to by developers. The spatial metaphor is actuallyof much less value in controlling interaction, engagementand so forth than might be imagined. Where present,common MUD facilities like teleporting or inter-room mes-saging undermine it even more. The spatial metaphor—theconnectedness of space, and the geography of the MUD—breaks down, and only the places remain.

Every MUD has its places—general gathering places, pri-vate places, homes, etc.—where the sense of place,established over time, within a community, is used to frameappropriate action. The inappropriate action of new, unen-culturated arrivals (“clueless newbies”) only serves toreinforce how much the regular characters know about theirsocial norms. But this has almost nothing to do with the“geography” and the familiar spatial metaphor—why, if itdid, then the clueless newbies should be able to work it outright away !

MUDS, like more traditional virtual reality systems, areimmersive environments; users enter the MUD, and interactin the MUD, rather than using the MUD to link their own,physical worlds in the way that media spaces do. However,in recent experiments, researchers have added audio andvideo conferencing facilities to MUDS. Jupiter [12] is amulti-media extension to a traditional text-based MUD. Itretains the traditional spatial analogy of the MUD-objectsand users located in rooms, which filter activity as a whole—and then adds shared graphical objects, as well as audio andvideo streams. Like typed text, audio and video are availableon a room-by-room basis; each user can see and hear othersin the same room.

However, the result can be quite confusing. Following fromthe observations we made in section eight, Jupiter exhibits avery mixed metaphor. My virtual presence is in one of Jupi-ter’s virtual rooms, where I share with some other usersaccess to a virtual whiteboard and an acoustic space which

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extends into all of our real offices. But at the same time, I canalso see representations of these people in their offices,typing at their computers. They seem to be in two places atonce. The information which their video signal projects intothe system denies the metaphor which the system is con-structed to provide. Since that metaphor is what unifies andunderpins all activity in the MUD, the result is confusing.

The analysis of Jupiter in supporting interaction and collab-oration in a large research facility is only just beginning.However, from our own experiences, we would suggest thatthe mixed metaphor results in Jupiter being used much moreas a media space than as a MUD, by those who have audioand video connectivity through it. The dissonance of virtualreality and multimedia representations is just too much tobear.

This reiterates a point we made earlier; that, when we thinkabout the difference between space and place, we can seethat the various media which might be involved in a commu-nication technology play very different roles. When audioand video are added to a textual interface, the result is defi-nitely not the same sort of system with more bandwidth.Instead, the result is a new kind of medium, and so the sortsof behaviors which people will exhibit are changedradically.

CONCLUSIONSWhat we have pointed to here is the distinction betweenspace and place; and this distinction has important implica-tions for the design and evaluation of collaborativecomputational environments.

Spatial models are increasing popularity in the design of allsorts of collaborative environments. These designs are basedon the assumption that, since many aspects of our behaviourseem to be organised around spatial elements of the everydayworld, then we can carry over these patterns of behaviour tovirtual environments by designing them around the sameaffordances for action and interaction that the everydayworld exhibits-doors, windows, walls, distance, proximityor whatever.

However, we have argued that, in everyday experience andinteraction, it is a sense of place, rather than the structure ofspace, which frames our behaviour. Our sense of place is acultural or communally-held understanding of the appropri-ateness of styles of behaviour and interaction, which may beorganised around spatial features but is, nonetheless, quiteseparate from them. After all, as we have seen, non-spatialenvironments exhibit placeness, too.

The placeness which operates in these non-spatial environ-ments—and, we would argue, in spatial ones too-is anevolved set of behaviors rooted in our ability to creativelyappropriate aspects of the world, to organise it, and to bendit to our needs. From this, then, we argue that it is dangerousto confuse the notions space and place. By all means, let usdesign interfaces based on spatial organisation and all thatcomes with it; but at the same time, we must be wary ofclaims that this will support place-based “real world” behav-iors. In fact, by embedding placeness in spatial metaphors,we can accidentally undermine the very thing that makes

place work—the shared understandings of appropriate use,and the social interpretation of cues in the physical environ-ment. When my “virtual door” absolutely controls access tomy virtual presence in a media space, then the opportunity islost for an appropriate social interpretation of a “closeddoor”. My ability to appropriate elements of the world andturn them into cues for availability disappears. This is theparadox of design around spatial metaphors.

After all, a virtual world filled with virtual offices and virtualdesks isn’t populated by virtual people, but by real ones.Drawing contrasts and analogies between, for example,media spaces and the “real world” is unhelpful, becausemedia spaces are the real world. Their inhabitants are realpeople, engaged in real interactions in the course of doingtheir real work. And, as such, they will engage in the veryreal creation of forms of activity and work, just as they do intheir everyday physical environments. This is what it’s criti-cal to design for; and this is what is lost when we fail tosupport the duality of space and place.

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the many people who have contrib-uted to the development of these ideas over the years, andhave given us valuable feedback on this paper, includingAnnette Adler, Victoria Bellotti, Sara Bly, Tom Erickson,Bill Gaver, Beki Grinter, Austin Henderson, AllanMacLean, Scott Minneman, Vicki O’Day and Bob Stults.

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