Modelling social translucency in mediated environments

This paper concerns social aspects of interaction with ambient intelligence applications that support awareness of activities and whereabouts of others. It introduces FN-AAR, an abstract model of such systems, which allows to model social translucence, an essential requirement for the social embedding and acceptance of such technologies. FN-AAR abstracts away from implementation concerns, modelling the information shared and the information that is observable by actors. The model allows describing and clarifying fine nuances regarding the concept of social translucence lending clarity to earlier discussions. It is argued that building systems that support this conceptual model will allow their users to specify and configure the disclosure and display of information in terms meaningful to them rather and relevant to their concerns.