itsme: Interaction Design Innovating Workstations.

In the last 30 years, there has been little innovation in workstations. The desktop metaphor has become the standard user interface, with its pros (e.g., ease of learning) and cons (e.g., interaction constraints for skilled users, lack of context awareness). In this paper, we present itsme, an Italian initiative to design the next-generation workstation. Interaction design is the basis of the project, as well as the involvement of a wide community of contributing users. The early design phases of the project led to the definition of a new metaphor for personal computing, based on stories and venues. The metaphor is being adopted for the development of a novel front-end for the Linux operating system, aimed at fulfilling the needs and desires of knowledge workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]