(Illustrated above) An architect knows that one pane in her building modeling application contains a variety of information about what her collaborators are doing in the same project file. She uses this pane to understand who is working in the same building areas that she is, as well as to see who is available for conversation (see illustration).

A financial trader learns that a certain area of his trading application will visually indicate when another trader is acting on the same information that he is. This notification allows traders to prevent discoordination by initiating discussions about their current work.

A scientist knows that any time she looks at individual items in her analysis application, such as samples within a clinical study, a specific area of the screen will notify her of related actions being performed by other members of her lab. Also, when she first logs into the application, a special “welcome” display summarizes key changes that have been made to lab data since she the last time she accessed the tool.

How do targeted individuals currently keep track of their colleagues’ actions as part of the work practices that your team is striving to mediate?

How, specifically, do current forms of shared awareness promote the effective execution of loosely coordinated or truly collaborative work? How do they prevent conflicts?

What breakdowns currently occur due to insufficient awareness? Could these problems present opportunities for your product?

Where might the introduction of your team’s computing tool remove implicit and subtle awareness cues from targeted work practices?

What larger design and technology trends could influence your ideas about how workers might remain appropriately aware of others’ actions within your application concepts?

How might your sketched application frameworks aid workers by providing valuable workspace awareness cues at a structural level, across various functional areas?

What types of actions in your product’s shared workspaces could be tied to stronger, attention grabbing cues? To weaker, almost subliminal, cues?

Who needs to see various cues? How might awareness information relate to individuals’ permissions and tailored views?

At what point might users of your computing tool face information overload from awareness cues? When might it be more appropriate to tie workspace awareness to individual functions and contextual areas, rather than your tool’s overarching structure?

How long should specific awareness cues last in your application’s framework? How might they be tied to longer term, stored histories for certain functions and interaction objects?

What impact could overarching awareness functionality have on the larger conceptual and interaction models of your sketched products?

What unwanted surveillance effects could unintentionally occur from broadcasting specific actions to other workers?

How might any standards set by your structural workspace awareness designs influence your team’s envisioning of awareness cues within individual functionality concepts?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?