Scenarios
- Access messages
(esp. urgent) stored in email, voice mail, ...
- Directory
Information (finding someone or
something)
- Documents
(viewing, printing, records, ...)
- Games
(eg treasure hunt)
- Information
Presentation ("About"
button)
- Internet phone(talking to people) Since there will almost always be
a telephone available, this seems unnecessary.
- Leave notes/send
notes (an electronic bulletin board)
- Ordering Supplies
- Phone Forwarding This
involves some cross architecture work that is beyond the
scope of this summer's project.
- Printing job
control
- Reporting
problems, errors, etc
- Scheduling
- Screen Saver
(?)
- Suggestion Boxes
(add, discuss, and vote on suggestions)
- Other Scenarios
- Fireman
- Broadcast
[3] safest route to exits
- Find location of
[3] fire extinguishers or water points, etc
- Record events for later analysis
- Project/Interest Group
- Authenticate & access(/modify?)
shared group information
- Send group wide notices (ie new meeting
location)
- Vote
on a group topic [3]
- Repairman
- Visitor
- Staff
- Entrance/Lobby
- Hallway
- Office
- Meeting/Conference Room
- Shared Laboratory
- Library
In general, it's not clear how
useful library stuff is: most of this stuff is already
supported by the library, in the library. Also, there's
alot of overload to getting it working in terms of data
entry, etc.
- Coffee Room/Kitchen
- Storage Area
- Lounge (eg patio, terrace)
- Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room
...
Accessing messages (esp. urgent) stored in email, voice mail, ...
User group: Staff
Location: Pretty much everywhere. Meeting/Conference
Room [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.
User group: Visitor [1], Staff [2,3], Repairman [3],
Fireman [3]
Location: Everywhere [1,2], Printer/Photocopier/FAX
Room [3]
- 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.
- 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 ...
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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? :-{)
User group: Pretty much everyone
Location: Pretty much everywhere.
This can happen at several levels. For example:
- At the "universal" we can access
information about the company, company news, etc.
- 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?)
- At the level of the individual user, one might have a
todo list, etc.
- An object might have information about who should be
contacted for repair purposes, etc.
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]
- 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.
- You leave her a note in response telling
her to look for you outside on the cafeteria balcony.
- 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.
- 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.
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
- 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.
User group: Visitor, Staff, Project Group
Location: Printer/Photocopier/FAX Room
- 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 ..
User group: Pretty much everyone.
Location: Pretty much everywhere.
- 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.
User group: Visitor, Staff [4], Project Group
Location: Pretty much everywhere. Meeting/Conference
Room [2]
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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:
- 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
- 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.
- 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!".
- 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 ...
:-)".
- 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.
Copyright © 1996 FX Palo Alto Laboratory,
Inc. For problems or questions regarding this web contact Jen
Mankoff. Last updated June 24,
1996.