(Illustrated above) An architect works on a new approach to a museum’s facade in her building modeling application. She chooses not to update the version that her colleagues can see until she explicitly publishes it back to the main version of the building model, allowing her freedom to independently gestate her ideas.

A scientist selects a set of clinical data in her analysis application. The data represents many months of effort from her lab’s team, and she finds enormous satisfaction in finally uploading it to a larger database that contains the collective output of a number of separate research labs working on the same clinical problem.

A financial trader knows that most everything he does in his trading application can end up being visible in real time to his colleagues, especially if it conflicts with any actions that they are taking. Understanding this visibility, he sometimes uses an old “quick calculation” tool to privately assess the viability of his ideas before turning to his trading application to book deals.

How do targeted individuals currently separate private incubation and public communication in the work practices that your team is striving to mediate?

Why do workers currently create and make use of these separations? What events can trigger them to bridge these boundaries in either direction?

Which “public” recipients, stakeholders, and colleagues are targeted workers typically concerned with when they think about “privacy”?

Which current work practices are often accomplished in private, either individually or within a collaborating group, and then distributed to “outside” audiences?

Which targeted tasks and larger activities are continually visible to certain collaborators?

Which efforts in workers’ practices lie between the extremes of entirely private and entirely public? How do people currently conceptualize these shades of gray?

How might your functionality concepts mirror current approaches to managing the visibility of work, especially when it comes to preventing unwanted public viewing?

What reinforcing cues and messaging could clarify current privacy states within specific interactions?

How might transitional pathways between private and public states provide users with clear narratives and unambiguous feedback?

How could individual cases of the distinction between public and private collectively communicate a larger conceptual model of visibility rules within your application concepts?

How might your team’s approaches for supporting the transition from private work to public visibility relate to your other concepts for supporting cooperation, collaboration, and workspace awareness?

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?