Spaces, Places, Landscapes and Views: Experiential Design of Shared Information Spaces

This chapter focuses on the World Wide Web (web) as a provider of shared information landscapes. It reviews our work to design three-dimensional spaces for information navigation and social interaction, and suggests an approach to such design based on an experiential theory of meaning. The increasing use of virtual three-dimensional space in information environments is noted, and personal spaces are contrasted with public places. Earlier work on information islands, vehicles and customisable views of such information spaces is also presented. The experiential approach, as applied to information landscape design, is contrasted with the traditional view of human-computer interaction (HCI) design as a means of conveying system functionality from the mind of the designer to that of the user. This experiential approach seems promising, if we assume that we do not know in advance what the functions of interactions in shared information spaces might be. As with life in general, such interactions mean what they are experienced to be.