Buddyspace: Large-Scale Presence for Communities at Work and Play

Presence awareness' of peer-group members can enhance the emotional well-being of isolated learners and create a sense of community, fostering group communication and interaction. This paper presents our research framework in the design of presence-based applications for collaborative, learning and social environments and investigates the design of innovative playful and group learning activities for large numbers of people, based primarily on their mere presence. To promote the deployment of next-generation presence-based tools in distance-learning and social environments, we have implemented and deployed an open-source 'presence environment' called BuddySpace, which integrates Instant Messaging, geo-location services, peripheral presence awareness and presence-enabled multiplayer games.

Publication(s)

Appeared in: The Workshop 'The Role of Online Community Spaces in Shaping Virtual Community Interactions', in the International Conference on Communities and Technologies 2003, September 19-21 2003, Amsterdam, The Netherlands