This year's ACM Computer-Supported Cooperative Work conference (CSCW) featured a new interactive demo: the Visualink Portal. Built by Cx technologists in residence Benedetta Piantella and Doron Tal, along with Cx Faculty Mor Naaman, the Portal links distributed workspaces together in a way that promotes mutual awareness and common purpose.
The Visualink portal improves on previous workspace connection tools by running on inexpensive cameras and Raspberry Pi hardware, allowing setup with any screen, and incorporating computer vision and image processing algorithms to blur the video feed, preserving privacy. The researchers hope that that tools like these can be used in distributed offices, labs, and social spaces to promote group and interpersonal connection.