• There is a flow of information in every building. In the Ambient Agoras Project we aim to improve the flow of information between humans and use "the building" as a mediator.
    • To be aware of this aim, we call the flow of information "InfoRiver" and think of it as a digital flow of information objects. To access these digital entities we need interfaces in hard- and software.
    • The InforMall is a public interface to the InfoRiver. On the large touch-sensitive display information objects are presented as "Bubbles" floating in the InfoRiver.

 

    • To access the information presented by a "bubble" in the InfoRiver, a bubble can be dragged to the lower area of the InforMall ("out of the InfoRiver"), where its content will be displayed.
    • If the displayed information seems valuable to a user, he can take along the bubble using his personal ViewPort device. To simplify the task of taking something from one device and transfer it to another, we created the "Port" interface.
    • When a ViewPort is held closely to a Port, a special icon appears on both devices (e.g., InforMall and ViewPort). Information objects can now be transfered between the devices by simply dragging them onto one of the icons.