Active
Map is a visualization tool that enables users to gain greater awareness of the location of people in their workplace environment,
increasing each person’s ability to seek out colleagues for informal, face-to-face interactions. Our initial implementation
of the tool places images of each person’s face on a map of the building. We have explored variations on how to best represent
a range of features: the “freshness” of location information, groups of people in a single office, and the movement of people
throughout the environment. We describe the context of the environment in which the tool is used, the features embodied in
this tool, variations we have implemented for representing location and movement information, and some potential extensions
for future versions of the tool.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Ted Anagnost, another member of the CSTaR Active Environments research group who contributed several
ideas to the development of ACTIVEMAP; Andy Fano, for feedback both on the ACTIVEMAP application and this paper; Tony Costa
and Ed Gottsman, for suggestions regarding a number of aspects of the application; and the anonymous reviewers for their careful
reading and useful suggestions for improving this paper. The authors, of course, assume full responsibility for any remaining
shortcomings in the document.