Understanding a Sense of Place in Collaborative Environments

Abstract

The article explores how mobile, nomadic and distributed workers develop a sense of place to counter the lack of spatial determinants which increasingly characterize contemporary work and lifestyles. When developing collaborative technologies, designing for a sense of place becomes especially problematic when spatial realities and empirical coordinates are absent or no longer take precedence. What is lacking in the current knowledge is a coherent workplace approach that can offer an overview of placeness, delineating not only the core understandings of place but more importantly where these overlap and at times conflict. The intention of this article, therefore, is to present an approach that captures how key features of place as opposed to space, can be used as a motivation for the design of collaborative technologies. Most importantly, this approach must explain how the concept of place and its distinction from space can provide new understandings of the public, private and permanent places of work that help us to sustain productivity in the workplace. These at once discrete and overlapping concepts help to frame the key research questions: where is work? What constitutes a place of work? Who works there?