This is a long post intended for the highly talented builders involved in the AWSource Project. Please do not it a consider rant.
First off, and information room is defined as a collection of Web links placed in a three-dimensional setting and organized in such a way as to enhance research and retrieval of knowledge.
To my knowledge the work that we are doing has not been done in an open forum before (I am not counting my experimental work). The world we are building is an ActiveWorlds asset. There is a very strong possibility that this world will be used by employees of our favorite company to sell ActiveWorlds universes to anybody they can drag in the door. The capability we are creating cannot be done in second life. What we are seeking to create is a virtual reality news center that is going to morph as it is used. We are seeking to empower the human wiki so that people who visit and share links in chat or once fêted point out links in specific information rooms which are nothing more than storehouses. As such the storehouses have a rather unique attribute not found in the standard favorite’s folder of Internet Explorer. The links that we default in this bill become community favorites. In essence any sign of person clicks on can represent literally hours they would have spent searching on the web consequently it becomes a find it wants use it forever. That's a big saving in time. People who fanatically follow the news also share abhorrence of wasted time.
A person who is looking for information is doing exactly that. When using a three-dimensional setting the only time that the user should have to navigate is when changing locations or choosing to more closely examine an object. Having experimented with information rooms for the last five years it is my experience that people who hit multiple sites do so with the least number of keystrokes especially when searching for something. Consequently all of my rooms after my initial failures are cylindrical.
At the center of each cylinder is a command platform. The command platform is central to the ability of scanning the entire room with a single key. This key is one of the horizontal arrow keys on the keyboard. In this way by simply holding the arrow key down all of the choices spin by right to left or left or right. I recently gave a talk at the National Defense University in Washington, DC on the subject of knowledge management related to my Africa information rooms which were built as a proof of concept for the U.S. Army. It is my observation that in the Africa build overwhelmingly users simply stay in the center of the room and spin.
One of the other presenters used second life and he showed an information room arranged like a hallway with cubicles on each side. In order to access links, while the individual was doing his presentation, he had to walk down the hall and turn and face each cubicle in order to click on the picture link that was there. Because of the arrangement it was difficult to see each one of the signs at one time as a result it took much longer for him to display the links he wanted to show off than had they been arranged in a circle.
In an information room information, in our case containing web links, can be coded in numerous ways. One of the major advantages of reality is the ability to place objects in a three-dimensional space. The following are the kinds of codes that are available to identify different kinds of information. The there are several beginning with: the color of the sign, the shape of the sign the text font on the sign, whether the site has a picture or not. Another is the actual location of the sign it can be high or low near or far left or right. It may also be moving or have a special effect. As you can see there are a large number of variables that can be used to code information. Once these conventions are established any visitor to the room has an appreciation immediately of what kind of information is related to specific
codes.Human beings rely on sight for the vast majority of the information that comes to us. The same is true in a virtual environment or it wouldn't be virtual. The human eye has a specific field of vision when an individual looks straight ahead they can see only a certain height above in a certain height below. It is within that field of vision that signs should be placed in an information room how many signs you can get into that field of vision is a function of how far away the signs are from the command platform. When a command platform has a banister that banister shortens the field of vision on the bottom edge. The reason is because the banister itself interferes with the observation of the signs in the lower rows. For this reason banisters should be then and just high enough to prevent the casual individual from falling off the command platform. One of the nice functions of the field of vision phenomena is that you can have more than one command platform so that when an observer moves from one level to another the rings of information links that the individual can see changes. This allows for some novel arrangements of information within the same space and serving to different purposes.
The exterior of information room is also a code. A uniform shape and texture for information rooms in a complex does not assist navigation within the complex. People get lost when they walked around blocks of apartments that all look the same. That's exactly the same thing that happens when all the information rooms look the same. So shape coding each of the buildings so that it has an original aspect is absolutely critical to the success of the build. Diversity in the build makes giving directions easier. For example one user might tell another "Go north to the big red brick thing take the first left past the pointy thing to look for the Orange ball". Those instructions are easier to remember than "go three runs right ,one left turn up the ram then turn left", which sounds more like dungeons and dragons.
The main reasons that advanced builders were sought after for this project is one their demonstrated originality. However, there are really only two things that are required for the room to be successful in its primary mission which is to house information links. It has to be cylindrical and it has to have a command platform. Everything else except possibly the subject to be housed in the various rooms and their primary locations is up for grabs.
In the original concept drawing locations of various information rooms were specifically assigned locations North East South and West. Since the primary theme of the world is the gathering of useful news sites leave room to the north is the first room that most users will walk to because it is the first thing they're going to say. Most people arriving in a world with a number of choices generally choose north because this is where a teleport leaves them.
So to recap for you the main requirement that I have for the creation of information rooms is a cylindrical inside and an unobscured central platform.
By the way The reason I am not building is that I am engaged in serous data mining to gather the several hundred or so links need to populate this monster. I am using multiple search engines and have collected quite a bit so far. Once the buildings are sorted out I'll be posting the signs. I built a special data base tool for this purpose. This gizmo captures links and automaticaly writes the action field for the object properties. Saves me a ton of work and it will be avalable to you as a run time if you want it and after I get the 4,2 font scripting working. Here is a peak at it.
I know most of the people building on this project have not worked in knowledge management consequently their building instincts may override some of the primary requirements of the project purpose. It is not really a bad thing. Creativity among team members often involves some major idea crashes. However, the work to date is superior in every detail and once the links are posted in the various different information rooms I think all of you will be able to get a better idea of how the whole thing works. I also should point out there is no way I could personally create the content that is in there now it is a work of genius and leaves me in AWe (no pun intended).
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