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| Most of today’s computing environments— by design—support interaction between one person and one computer. The user sits at a workstation or laptop, or holds a personal digital assistant (PDA), focusing on a single device at a time—even with several devices around, linked and synchronized. Collaboration occurs over the network using e-mail, shared files, or in some cases explicitly designed groupware. In noncomputerized work settings, on the other hand, people interact in a rich environment that includes information from many sources—paper, whiteboards, computers, physical models, and so on. They can use these simultaneously and move among them flexibly and quickly. The few integrated multidevice computer environments existing today tend to be highly specialized and based on application-specific software. |
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