These are, for example, mutual gaze and trust. In effect, to be able to achieve mutual gaze has been observed as a key element in establishing trust, also in mediated interaction (Heath and Luff 1992; Heath et al. 1995; Rocco 1998; Acker and Levitt 1987; Ishii and Kobayashi 1992; Fullwood 2006). As noted by Caroline Nevejan (2007), trust is a prerequisite to the individual experience of presence in mediated environments, contributing a ‘sense of being there’ or of ‘non-mediation’ (IJsellsteijn and Riva 2003; Lombard and Ditton 1997; Held and Durlach 1992).
Trust is, further, a core element in the body of ‘informal and tacit practices’, which sustain knowledge sharing in accordance with Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowing (Polanyi 1958, 1966) and Wittgenstein’s concepts of rule-following and collectively established meaning (Wittgenstein 1953). A large body of existing research from the area of dialogue, skill and tacit knowledge (e.g. Göranzon et al. 2006) may thus be applied to presence design.
In the following, I will attempt to show how the issue of trust relates to architectural design—if by architectural design, we also encompass the spatial extensions enabled through presence design.
Sense of being there
My study is equally informed by research that has determined factors that may contribute to poorer synchronizing (Argyle and Cook 1976); and ‘frictions’ (Davenport and Prusak 1998) that inhibit knowledge sharing in human interaction and collaborative co-present contexts.
