Human Aspects of Smart Spaces for Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

During May and June 2011, we ran two workshops with a theme entitled “Smart Spaces for Smart People” [1]. Although organized under the auspices of the e-Science Institute, the participants came from a variety of disciplines and brought a range interests. The workshops themselves were run as experiments in running smart meetings with the intentions of exchanging and recording knowledge and decisions discussed in the meeting. A recurring theme in the workshops was not only that technology can be provided in a smart space to help in the knowledge transfer and recording process, but also that the technology will only be adopted and exploited if the users of the smart space can easily use it. There are other human factors that affect the success of collaboration in a smart space. These include the willingness for participates to collaborate if they have concerns over privacy and anonymity, particularly when discussions and decisions are recorded using technology. The dynamics of how participants work together in groups to transfer knowledge can also be enhanced through the use of smart spaces. The fact that the workshops were run in different physical environments also provided insights into how the physical design of the meeting space might have on effective collaboration and therefore effective transmission of knowledge. This paper is the second in a series of three, each dealing with different aspects of the workshops and how they influenced our thinking about knowledge transfer meetings, particularly in the context of sharing research outputs.