Realizing a Virtual Working Environment Surrounded by a Personal Digital Library for Assisting the Worker's Creative Activity

本研究旨在利用数位图书馆相关技术，建构一个电脑化虚拟工作环境。这里的工作环境由数字图书馆包围的分层工作子空间组成，每个工作子空间为指定的任务收集多个窗口。工作者在这种环境下进行日常工作时，能够找到创造性活动的想法。为了实现这样的环境，我们构建了一个数字图书馆，存储各种应用数据（包括文档），并创建一个工作空间，每个子空间被放置在特定的层中，这里的数字图书馆可以作为一个公共工作子空间。我们可以有效地浏览它，然后建议“这个数据将是相关的”，通过考虑每个数据的关键字和路径名，树结构的数据排列和工人的反馈相关性判断自动得出。工作空间是通过利用多显示器并通过以分层方式布置子空间而扩展的虚拟三维空间。为了辅助创造性活动，在不同的工作子空间中传播的各种信息必须同时被操纵。这是通过旋转整个工作子空间，以便寻找到所需的工作subspaces.We实验比较了实现的环境与广泛使用的多窗口和/或虚拟桌面的，看看如何有效的主题可以执行任务。虽然我们没有证明受试者是否能提高创造力，但他们在这里的环境中相当有效地完成了给定的任务。

This research aims to realize a computerized virtual working environment by employing the techniques related to a digital library. A working environment here consists of layered work-subspaces surrounded by a digital library, where each work-subspace collects multiple windows for a specified task. The workers become able to find the ideas for the creative activity while he/she proceeds with the daily tasks under this environment. To realize such an environment we construct a digital library storing various kinds of application data (including documents), and create a workspace in which each subspace is placed in some specified layer.A digital library here can work as a common-work-subspace. We can effectively browse in it followed by the suggestion "this data will be relevant," derived automatically by considering the keywords and the path-name of each data, the tree-structured data arrangement, and the worker's feed back relevance judgment. The workspace is a virtual 3-dimensional space expanded by utilizing multi-displays and by arranging subspaces in a layered fashion. To assist the creative activity the various kinds of information spread in different work-subspaces is to be manipulated simultaneously. This is done by rotating the entire work-subspace so as to look into the desired work-subspaces.We experimentally compared the realized environment with the widely utilized multi-window and/or virtual desktop ones to see how effectively the subjects can perform the tasks. Though we did not certify whether or not the subjects could raise up the creativity, they performed the given tasks fairly effectively in the environment here.