A work service model of the ubiquitous environment for collaboration

Abstract

Office environments have recently adopted ubiquitous computing for collaboration and mobile communication to promote real-time enterprises. Ubiquitous offices, introduced by Weiser and adopted as emerging computational technology to support office works, have already affected the practice of companies and organizations. Within this context, this study deals with a work service model of the ubiquitous office environments by understanding human behaviors and works in their workspace. We propose a ubiquitous office model considering the correlation between ubiquitous computing technologies and work services in the office. Two attributes are emphasized, collaboration and mobility, as identifiers for categorizing the work types. The types of work services have variations in the amount of communication and the proportion of working outside of the office. The proposed work service model of the ubiquitous office includes territorial and non-territorial services to enable workers in and out of the office to interact with each other effectively. The findings in this paper would be a theoretical basis for embodying an intelligent office which supports office works efficiently.