ReticularSpaces

ReticularSpaces [1, 2] is a new and integrated smartspace technology which is based on the principles of activity-based computing  as the overall design approach [3]. ReticularSpaces supports:

1. A unified interaction paradigm for handling activities, applications, resources, documents, and services across a distributed displays environment.
2. A peer-to-peer and event-based architecture to manage the complex flow of distributed activities and documents between users, displays and devices.
3. Support for mobile and nomadic users moving in and out of the smart space environment.
4. Support for communication, collaboration and awareness among local and remote users.

The infrastructure of ReticularSpaces is a peer-to-peer architecture where each device can store activity information in a local activity manager. In order to share local activity information, ReticularSpaces allow displays to mount activity managers as they are discovered. Hence, if a user with a laptop enters a smart space, all devices will discover the activity manager of each other. The user can then, for example, go to the public display and mount his own activity manager, thereby getting access to activities and data on his own laptop. When leaving the smart space again, the user’s activity manager is automatically un-mounted.

Designed to unify the user experience in a smart spaces, ReticularSpaces provides the ReticUI user interface consisting of two views; the Activity View (Figure 1) and the Action View (Figure 2). Both views are zoomable and panable, and are thus designed to be used on any display size, even very large wall-based displays. Contextual pie menus are used consistently to allow for users to access them across a large wall-based display. The displays do not, however, support rotation, and when used on a tabletop display, the user should be situated in ‘front of’ the table.

When a user clicks an action icon, ReticUI shows the action view (Figure 2). The primary purpose of this view is to show the action’s operations and the resources they link to. Since work is done at the level of operations, the action view is where the user is working with the resources in the action. Resources can be text documents, images, files, or web pages.

The software architecture of the ReticularSpaces system is illustrated in Figure 3. The system consists of two main components; the ReticUI user interface component and an underlying infrastructure consisting of a set of ActivityManagers. In addition to these two components, the infrastructure is able to connect to external services, like location tracking systems, RFID readers, and other domain-specific services.