What design variables communicate information on the periphery?
People who engage regularly with technology interact with hundreds of visual, auditory, and multimodal displays each day. These displays, which have been described as calm technology or peripheral or ambient displays, move information from the periphery to the center of human attention and back. Our team is working on several projects that will help to determine the best sets of design variables to use to get information from a display in situations of divided or limited attention. Specific projects include: The MOVE (Maps Optimized for Vehicular Environments) system, an in-car navigation system that provides assistance for drivers who are navigating an unfamiliar route. It overcomes limitations of current systems, which often provide too much information for the driver to attend to at any given moment. MOVE optimizes map information to provide situationally appropriate navigation information to the driver. We used an iterative design and evaluation process that shaped the MOVE system, starting with map reading and navigation studies that led to early designs for our system. A study of visual search tasks refined the renditions used for the system. A study of a prototype design showed that MOVE can reduce the driver's perceptual load significantly. The total map display fixation time was decreased six-fold, and the number of glances to interpret the map display were decreased threefold, when comparing MOVE’s contextually optimized display to a static display. A study of the MOVE system in a driving context showed that limited context results in more efficient navigation and safer driving behavior. Two initial experiments using a recognition task in a dual-task setting to understand how to best design visual information for divided attention situations. This work represents a contribution because it is based on existing work in peripheral displays, explores abstraction, iconography, contrast, and visual density as design variables, and provides several findings that merit further research, for example, that simple renditions are not favored over complex ones in ambient contexts. This work is forming the basis for explorations to determine if ambient icons should have different design features than traditional icons.Related Publications
Lee, J., Forlizzi, J., and Hudson, S. (2006). Iterative Design of MOVE: A Situationally Appropriate Vehicle Navigation System. To appear in International Journal of Human-Compter Studies. [local pdf, 2.6 MB]
Lee, J., Forlizzi, J., and Hudson, S.E. (2005). Studying the Effectiveness of MOVE: A Contextually Optimized In-Vehicle Navigation System. CHI05 Proceedings, 571-580. [local pdf, 544 KB]
Copyright 2008 Jodi Forlizzi.