The role of virtual world design in collaborative working

Introduces the concept of Internet-based shared worlds, and certain problems that have been encountered in their use for collaborative working. These problems can be addressed, it is argued, by the use of architectural notions, such as grounding the model in a physical institution and looking at the role of locales in real working environments. The problem of access to these locales is made by drawing a parallel between the structure of the online resources and the structure of physical spaces described in space syntax theory. Results from the latter, it is suggested, can inform the design of virtual spaces to facilitate both privacy and chance encounters