Varying Levels of User Interaction & Ambient Displays

Many researchers have been investigating ways to immerse users in an environment in which digital information is provided with varying levels of subtlety. An example of this would be the concept of ambient displays, which may provide digital information in the traditional format, but also utilise the user's surroundings and other senses to provide subtle information.

The following research paper, Ambient Displays: Turning Architectural Spaceinto an Interface between People and DigitalInformation, compared the use of a computer for gaining information to 'looking through a small window'. The authors noted that this method is limited in that it concentrates all of its information on the user's main area of focus. They propose that this experience can be enhanced by creating specialised environments where information exists all around the user.

One example the authors provided of such an environment is the ambientROOM. This was a project developed by the MIT Media Lab in 1997. It consisted of a fully enclosed room in which the user sat, surrounded by 'ambient media'. For example, a dot pattern on the wall would become busier depending on how many humans were detected in the area. The idea is that user would not fully focus their attention on this wallpaper, but this information would be subtly be tranferred to them through their peripheral vision.

This next report, Heuristic Evaluation of Ambient Displays, discusses how the effectiveness of these environments can be evaluated. This gives us a good idea of what features are important and how they should be implemented. The following bullet points outline some of these features, based off of the heuristics used in this report:

• All information provided should be relevant
• The display should be unobtrusive unless it requires full attention
• The user should notice a change in data, and not that the display clashes with its environment
• The display should be intuitive to minimise cognitive load
• Changes in the display's state should be easily noticeable
• It should be aesthetically pleasing

This final paper is in my opinion most relevant to our project, as it details the use of ambient displays in a public setting. It is quite possible that our project will be situated in such an environment, considering the directions we have been exploring (public data, public mood, collaboration, etc.).

It is called Interactive Public Ambient Displays: Transitioning from Implicitto Explicit, Public to Personal, Interaction with Multiple Users. The authors developed a system of displaying information in public, which provides more specific information depending on the user's engagement. For example, the system tracks how the user's body is oriented, so that if they are facing the screen they are assumed to be more engaged and are provided with more detailed information. 

Below is a video of this system in use:

These concepts could be beneficial to our project. If we are to base our project in a public setting, we might need a way to distinguish who is engaging with the project and who is simply passing by. In the area of data collection/representation, this provides us with a way of refining the data collected from that public environment, so that we are aware of the level of interaction the users were demonstrating.

External Links/References:

http://tmg-trackr.media.mit.edu/publishedmedia/Papers/314-Ambient%20Displays%20Turning%20Architectural/Published/PDF

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/ambientroom/

http://dl.acm.org.cit.idm.oclc.org/citation.cfm?id=1029656&CFID=565650252&CFTOKEN=48295749

http://dl.acm.org.cit.idm.oclc.org/citation.cfm?id=642642&CFID=565650252&CFTOKEN=48295749