Knowledge Room

Knowledge Room uses 3-D technology to enable users to navigate, gather, organize, and recall information. Taking advantage of human perception and spatial memory, Knowledge Room helps people organize information in their computer in the same way they organize in the real world: by manipulating objects in 3D space, with a sense of depth, color, texture, and lighting. Knowledge Room places the user inside of a large room with beamed ceilings, brick walls and an upper loft. Environment views offer close-ups of bookshelves in each area. The environment view engages one's sense of perception, invoking a different thought process: "Music files are in the cabinet near the stereo"; "Newspapers are in the large green book on the bottom shelf near the couch." Knowledge Room users organize information into books. A book can contain many things: web pages, notes, documents, email messages, or references to pictures, music, spreadsheets - anything launched from the traditional Windows desktop. Gathering content into books is easy: drag web pages from the browser and drop them into books; drop email messages and files onto books; "AutoClip" text into books from any Windows program. Knowledge Room provides an alternative to the decades-old desktop metaphor. The desktop is 2-dimensional and non-intuitive, limiting us to folders and files. Everyone is familiar with the problem of hunting for information through cryptically labeled files scattered across hundreds of confusing directory and subdirectory names. Web browsers only exacerbate the situation, giving us access to a world of information, with only flat folder bookmarks to keep track of it all. Knowledge Room changes all of that by tapping into our natural ability to think spatially, allowing us to keep information in real books, placed in oak and mahogany bookcases throughout a richly rendered environment. "Knowledge Room.... ...putting information in its place."