Montage

Abstract

Montage is a reseatch prototype that explores using video to help collaborators find opportune times to interact with eaeh other. Physical proximity with colleagues affords walking down hallways and peeking into offices in order to find a good time to contact someone. By helping members of distributed work groups more naturally find opportunities to interact with each other, Montage aims to provide a sense of teleproximity Montage uses momentary, reciprocal glances among networked workstations to make it easy to peek into someone's office. From a Montage glance, users can quickly start a full-featured desktop video conference. If the glance shows that the person is not in her office, Montage provides quick access to browse her on-line calendar, send her e-mail, or send her an electronic note that pops up on her screen. Preliminary usage data show that users had short, lightweight interactions through Montage, although most glances did not result in an interactive cmnmtmication.