(Illustrated above) An architect uses her building modeling application to work on early studies for the overall form of a new hospital. As she creates different versions of a central form idea, she inserts annotations of her design rationale in the models, knowing that these notes will be visible when she eventually presents the options to her colleagues, or if anyone happens to take the initiative to review the files on their own time.

A scientist uses her analysis application to review a number of data sets that have been recently generated in her clinical lab’s ongoing experiments. As she explores the new results, she leaves comments about each data set so that when colleagues in her lab later review the study, they can agree or disagree with her interpretations.

A financial trader, at the end of his work day, posts some thoughts on some recent, high value deals to a shared area of his trading application. He knows that colleagues in other global locations will likely read these notes when they first log in to start their day.

What workplace locations or objects in targeted organizations currently receive public annotations? What form can these annotations take?

What value do these public communications often provide within current work practices? Who are the intended audiences of specific kinds of annotations? Who else may view them?

What duration do various types of annotations have? Are they relatively static or are they iteratively placed and revised in a form of asynchronous conversation?

Which communication scenarios in your team’s application concepts might be usefully supported through contextual notes and markings rather than interrupting, “separate” messages?

What methods of annotation could be appropriate, based on characterized communication needs, in your differing functionality concepts? Might textual notes, onscreen drawings, standardized categorical facets, attachments, or links be useful?

How could visual representations of public annotations contextually tie them to their onscreen subjects?

Who should be able to view whose notes, based on their permissions within your computing tool? How might workers select certain audiences for their annotations?

What useful supplemental interactivity and information might your team envision around various public annotations? For example, should workers be able to set durations after which their notes will fade from prominence?

How will collaborators discover that an annotation is present? Might contextual flags and synchronous messaging be useful to ensure that certain annotations are viewed by intended parties?

What supplemental attributes, such as a timestamp and authorship information, could be usefully included as part of public annotations?

What privacy and security issues could be important to consider when envisioning functionalities that would track workers’ lightweight, unstructured conversations?

How might your team’s approaches for supporting public annotation relate to your other functionality 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?