eSPACE investigates how new technologies can help to improve the management of transactions in situations where customer and sales agent collaborate on specifying a complex product together in face-to-face situations, here customers and sales agents putting together a round-the-world trip. Currently, negotiations need many kinds of information, in various forms and places, e.g. online booking systems, brochures, websites. Coordinating these disparate representations is often a challenging process for both parties, which can inhibit rather than support the collaboration that needs to occur.

On the basis of ethnographic studies of existing agency practices and our current research into information design and display technology, we have designed a new technology designed to address some of these problems by enabling customers and sales agents to sit together, communicate and interact with information in new ways. The 'eTable' is a shared information space that employs innovative techniques including the use of (i) dynamically-linked items of information allowing people to 'read' complex multivariate data more easily, and (ii) multiple flatscreen displays which increase the number of users able to simultaneously engage in transactions. eSPACE, then, empowers the customer to take a bigger part in the decision process and the salesperson to more effectively manage the transaction.

Note: eSPACE was the brainchild of the late Mike Scaife. His vision and inspiration continue to drive the project.

Principal Investigators:

Yvonne Rogers, (Indiana University)
Tom Rodden, (University of Nottingham)
Mike Scaife (in memoriam)

Research Fellows:

John Halloran, (Interact Lab, Sussex University)
Ian Taylor, (University of Nottingham)

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