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Scenarios

By Task

By User Group

By Location

...


Accessing messages (esp. urgent) stored in email, voice mail, ...

User group: Staff

Location: Pretty much everywhere. Meeting/Conference Room [1]

  1. There's a 5 minute break in your meeting, so you quickly authenticate yourself at the PALplate and check for new email and voice mail.

    This is complicated to do, and it's questionable how necessary is. But that's a philosophical argument and I'll leave it for later.

Directory Information (finding someone or something)

User group: Visitor [1], Staff [2,3], Repairman [3], Fireman [3]

Location: Everywhere [1,2], Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room [3]

  1. You're visiting FX Pal's parent company in Japan, and need to find your way to the office of the researcher who's hosting you. You walk up to the conveniently placed kiosk in the lobby, and select his name from a list of employees. You print out the map returned from your query and use it to navigate the unfamiliar building.
  2. You're standing <in a meeting, in front of Joe's door> and want to find out where Joe is. You select his name from a list of employees, and ask for his location. The screen prompts you for authentication, and when it discovers you're his <wife, best friend, ...>, immediately returns a map with his location highlighted ...
  3. You need to make slides, but you don't know where the transparancies are kept. You walk up ta PALplate and select "transparancies" from a list of objects relevant to your location. It returns a map of the room you're in, with the location of the transparancies highlighted.

Documents (viewing, printing, records, ...)

User group: Visitor, Staff, Project Group, Repairman, Fireman

Location: Office, Meeting/Conference Room, Shared Laboratory, Library, Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room

  1. You're standing at the copier copying a paper when you notice an announcement: "Turn in your timesheets today" hanging on the wall. You don't have any timesheets left in your office, so you use the PALplate to print one out from the list of public documents.
  2. While you're there, you also access your private dicuments and print out the file where you've been keeping track of your hours online. It takes you almost no time to find this file because the document browser automatically brings up documents which have been modified recently, and you add to your hours every day.
  3. You need to print out some slides. Rather than putting slides in the printer tray, running back to your office to start the print job, and hoping that someone else hasn't started a job and printed on your transparancies, you simply access your private slides document from the PALplate in the printer room, put your transparancies in the printer tray, and print.
  4. You need to figure out how many hours of vacation you've earned so far this year, so you bring up your timesheet on a PALplate and check.
  5. There's a talk in the meeting room today at 11:00 and you want to find out what it's about. You walk over to the meeting room PALplate and bring up the blurb.

Games (eg treasure hunt)

User group: Visitor, Staff, Project Group

Location: Everywhere

Treasure Hunts ... need anything more be said? :-{)

Information Presentation ("About" button)

User group: Pretty much everyone

Location: Pretty much everywhere.

This can happen at several levels. For example:

  1. At the "universal" we can access information about the company, company news, etc.
  2. A meeting room might have phone numbers for people who are supposed to be meeting there, or inventory information about equipment which is or isn't present. (does this belong under Documents?)
  3. At the level of the individual user, one might have a todo list, etc.
  4. An object might have information about who should be contacted for repair purposes, etc.

Leave notes/send notes (an electronic bulletin board)

User group: Visitor [2], Staff [1,2,3,4], Project Group, Repairman [3], Fireman [3]

Location: Pretty much everywhere. Office [1,2], Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room [4]

  1. You're standing in front of Naomi's office door, ready to go to lunch, and she's not there. Her PALplate has a handwritten note telling you she's down the hall talking to Joe, go ahead without her.
  2. You leave her a note in response telling her to look for you outside on the cafeteria balcony.
  3. It's time for the company-wide picture ceremony. The person organizing the ceremony brodcasts a note to all PALplates for immediate display telling everyone to get outside for the pictures.
  4. You're in the printer room, and you notice that a colleague's print job is finished, and has been lying around for some time. You send them a quick notemail reminding them of it.

Ordering supplies 

User group: Staff, Project Group, Repairman

Location: Office, Meeting/Conference Room [1], Shared Laboratory, Library, Coffee Room/Kitchen, Storage Area, Lounge, Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room

  1. You're in a meeting, about to fall asleep, so you decide to grab a quick cup of tea. To your consternation, there are no Peppermint Pinch teabags left. You use the PALplate hanging above the coffee table to enter a request for more of your favorite tea beverage.

Printing job control

User group: Visitor, Staff, Project Group

Location: Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room

  1. You walk into the printer room to pick up your paper, only to discover that someone is currently printing out a book on the printer. You use the PALplate to redirect your job to a printer down the hall.

    It seems like this functionality should probably be incorporated into the printer ..

Reporting Problems, errors, etc

User group: Pretty much everyone.

Location: Pretty much everywhere.

  1. The light bulb went out in the refridgerator. So you walk over to the PALplate on the wall, and select the "Fix it" button. You select from a list of objects located near the PALplate, and use some menus to select urgency and other standard parts of error messages. In addition, you write a hand-written addition saying what went wrong. The result is mailed to the person in charge of that area.

Scheduling

User group: Visitor, Staff [4], Project Group

Location: Pretty much everywhere. Meeting/Conference Room [2]

  1. You need find out if you have any meetings today before going to lunch with your colleague. You go over to the nearest PALplate, bring up the scheduler, and authenticate yourself. You can see that if you leave now, you'll have plenty of time for lunch.
  2. You're meeting runs over, and there's no time for the final demo. You decide to reschedule. You go over to the meeting room PALplate and select "Schedule". The schedule is empty today from 3pm onwards. Everyone can make it then, so you add an entry for your group.
  3. Since you need some A/V equipment for the demo, you access the "object" schedule and check if any is available. It is, so you add a note to the schedule that you need it at 3pm.
  4. When you finish, you press the "Broadcast" button, and the event is added to the calendar of everyone in the group which scheduled the meeting.

Screen Saver (?)

User group: Staff

Location: Everywhere

The screen saver is a way to let people know about things which aren't urgent, to display art, or to just be silly. When someone walks up to the idle machine, they can view the image present, or, by touching the screen, switch to the main menu. For example:

  1. When you walk up to your office door, you see five yellow sticky papers with fingerpaintings on them. This suggests that several people have left you NoteMail, so you log in to your PALplate
  2. When you walk into the building, you see the words "Enjoy your long weekend!" floating on the screen of the entryway PALplate. Oops ... you forgot that today is a vacation. You promptly turn around and got to the beach :-).

Suggestion Boxes (add, discuss, and vote on suggestions)

User group: Staff [1,2], Project Group [3]

Location: Pretty much everywhere.

  1. You've noticed for the 4th time that the clock in the coffee room is not set. So you walk up to the coffee-room PALplate and add a suggestion: "fix clock time", and vote "Yes!".
  2. While you're there you notice that someone's put up a new suggestion -- "buy artwork to decorate this dump". You vote "Yes!" and add the comment "my niece is a struggling artist ... :-)".
  3. You're project group has been trying to decide on which software to use in developing their web pages. Getting everyone to agree is impossible, so instead, you decide to hold a vote.

Other Scenarios


Copyright © 1996 FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc. For problems or questions regarding this web contact Jen Mankoff. Last updated June 24, 1996.