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Relevant Factors Functional Benefits
Visual Persistence • Ownership of display • Content can be easily reviewed
Content stays visually persistent unless • Location of display intentionally and unintentionally
explicit action is taken to remove it.
Fixed Function • Users of display • Cognitive and physical partitioning of
Many displays’ function is fixed. • Location of display task space
• Other, similar displays in context • Dependable constant display
Semantic Construction • Functional and expressive • Displays used across working modes
Users construct meaning by what is primitives • Functional conversion of displays
displayed and how.
Immobility of Information • Affordances of display technology • Differentiates use of displays
Content is generally difficult to move dictates its functional use
across displays.
Table 1. Summary of lessons learned from traditional MDEs.
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modes and task settings (e.g. collaborative, independent, This observation again points to the notion that display
etc.). It also facilitates the use of multiple constructions on surfaces play many different roles in workers activities.
the same display. In contrast, most digital display These roles are derived from their contextual location, and
technologies arrive with an application or technology for the physical affordances that they are capable of providing.
which it is to be used, meaning that it is difficult for users to Often, a display surface will play a single role (as in the
flexibly appropriate the technology for themselves (e.g. to case of an in/out board), yet they may also play several
connect to other information sources, to highlight, link, or roles (e.g. the brainstorming whiteboard that contains the
to allow information to mean something else, etc.). phrase “please leave on”).
Users’ ability to construct traditional displays dynamically
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
means that the intent, function and use of the display are The core message this work suggests is that we can derive
controlled by the users of the display itself. Thus, a user design understanding by studying and understanding the
can change the use of the display by simply roles of traditional displays in traditional MDEs. We have
adding/removing/changing content. For instance, a outlined four lessons from our own study of traditional
whiteboard in a meeting room may be used for a transient MDEs: visual persistence, fixed function, semantic
brainstorming session, but then the brainstorm could be construction, and mobility of information. These
made persistent and become a persistent reference display observations may be considered as “limitations” of
by placing the marker, “Please leave on” on the display. traditional MDEs, though we suggest that designers instead
This fundamentally changes the role of the display (albeit consider these observations as a means of insight into how
temporarily). users functionally employ traditional display surfaces. By
Similarly, the design tension for designers of displays is to studying the role of these display surfaces in traditional
provide meaningful, usable primitives without dictating MDEs, we gain insight into potentially powerful application
their use. Many large display technologies tend too far on areas for future digital displays. Our current work involves
either side of this design tension: either by providing understanding the intersection of “knowledge work”
primitives that are too simplistic, or by limiting users’ displays and ambient displays, and what affordances need
expressivity with those primitives. Furthermore, an to be provided to allow users to transition between different
additional challenge in the digital realm is that information modes of activity.
may arrive from outside sources, so primitives need to
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