Aroma

The AROMA project is exploring the kind of awareness that people effortless are able to maintain about other beings who are located physically close. We are designing technology that attempts to mediate a similar kind of awareness among people who are geographically dispersed but want to stay better in touch. AROMA technology can be thought of as a stand-alone communication device or -more likely --an augmentation of existing technologies such as the telephone or full-blown media spaces. Our approach differs from other recent designs for awareness (a) by choosing pure abstract representations on the display site, (b) by possibly remapping the signal across media between capture and display, and, finally, (c) by explicitly extending the application domain to include more than the working life, to embrace social interaction in general.