David N. Snowdon – författare

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are online digital places and spaces where we can be in touch, play together and work together, even when we are, geographically speaking, worlds apart. We can hang out, present alternative selves, interact with realistic and fantastic objects and carry out impossible manoeuvres. In CVEs we can share the experience of worlds beyond the physical. This book offers an introduction to up-to-date research in the area of CVE design and development. A reader might feel that, collectively, the chapters in this book beg the questions "What is a CVE?". And, for that matter, "What isn''t a CVE?". These are good questions, which invoke many different responses. What is certain is that CVEs are the perfect arena for gaining insights into human-human communication and collaboration, collaborative interaction with (virtual and real) objects, the effect of (potentially differing) embodiments, and the nature of place and space. Central to our work and to the work of the authors in this volume is the belief that putting people "into the loop" - explicitly considering human-human and human-environment interaction in the design and development process - is central to the design of any technology, and especially to the design of CVEs. In the case of CVEs this means actually putting people into the worlds, and many of our authors talk explicitly about their experiences and the experiences of study partici­ pants in virtual environments.

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are online digital places and spaces where we can be in touch, play together and work together, even when we are, geographically speaking, worlds apart. We can hang out, present alternative selves, interact with realistic and fantastic objects and carry out impossible manoeuvres. In CVEs we can share the experience of worlds beyond the physical. This book offers an introduction to up-to-date research in the area of CVE design and development. A reader might feel that, collectively, the chapters in this book beg the questions "What is a CVE?". And, for that matter, "What isn't a CVE?". These are good questions, which invoke many different responses. What is certain is that CVEs are the perfect arena for gaining insights into human-human communication and collaboration, collaborative interaction with (virtual and real) objects, the effect of (potentially differing) embodiments, and the nature of place and space. Central to our work and to the work of the authors in this volume is the belief that putting people "into the loop" - explicitly considering human-human and human-environment interaction in the design and development process - is central to the design of any technology, and especially to the design of CVEs. In the case of CVEs this means actually putting people into the worlds, and many of our authors talk explicitly about their experiences and the experiences of study partici­ pants in virtual environments.

In an era when increasing numbers of people are conducting research and interacting with one another through the internet, the study of ‘Inhabited Information Spaces’ is aimed at encouraging a more fruitful exchange between the users, and the digital data they are accessing. Introducing the new and developing field of Inhabited Information Spaces, this book covers all types of collaborative systems including virtual environments and more recent innovations such as hybrid and augmented real-world systems. Divided into separate sections, each covering a different aspect of Inhabited Information Systems, this book includes: How best to design and construct social work spaces; analysis of how users interact with existing systems, and the technological and sociological challenges designers face; How Inhabited Information Spaces are likely to evolve in the future and the new communities that they will create.