Disseminating and Sharing Information Through Time-Aware Public Displays

Abstract

Organizations use several methods to communicate formal and informal information. Currently, message boards or corkboards are used as a means for sharing information, coordinating activities and communicating with others. Using our organization as a case study, we observed that there are many message boards around the physical environment and most of them are covered with documents announcing upcoming meetings, seminars, conferences and other events. Besides that, some of the documents were out-of-date which makes it more difficult for users to find information that is relevant for their activities. To support the dissemination of information in organizations, we are proposing a Time-aware Public Display System that enables organization personnel to become aware of relevant information in a timely fashion. We used the Perspective Wall visualization to enable the categorization of the information into topics and dates. We evaluated the system design which shows that users considered appropriate and useful the presentation of information on the Time-aware Public Display.