Abstract
Ambient light displays can be used to convey information to office workers in the periphery of their attention without cluttering their computer monitor or distracting users from their primary task. In this paper we report on a user study evaluating “Lighten Up”, an ambient light display to give information about secondary task progress over time. We explored the design space with 42 light patterns. We chose two for a study comparing Lighten Up against a state-of-the-art on-screen progress bar. Our results suggest that users prefer Lighten Up over the on-screen display, if the ambient light display uses a stepwise increase in illumination. Increasing brightness in steps gives users a sense of rhythm and helps them keep track of the progress from the corner of their eye.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adamczyk, P.D., Bailey, B.P.: If not now, when?: the effects of interruption at different moments within task execution. In: Proceedings of CHI 2004, CHI 2004, pp. 271–278. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2004). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985727
Brewster, S.A., King, A.: The design and evaluation of a vibrotactile progress bar. In: Proceedings of the First Joint Eurohaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems, WHC 2005, pp. 499–500 (2005)
Crease, M., Brewster, S.A.: Making progress with sounds-the design and evaluation of an audio progress bar. In: Proceedings of ICAD 1998 (1998)
Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E., Wilhite, S.: A diary study of task switching and interruptions. In: Proceedings of CHI 2004, CHI 2004, pp. 175–182. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2004). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985715
Fogarty, J., Hudson, S.E., Atkeson, C.G., Avrahami, D., Forlizzi, J., Kiesler, S., Lee, J.C., Yang, J.: Predicting human interruptibility with sensors. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. 12(1), 119–146 (2005)
Harrison, C., Yeo, Z., Hudson, S.E.: Faster progress bars: manipulating perceived duration with visual augmentations. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2010, pp. 1545–1548 (2010)
Hart, S.: Nasa-task load index (NASA-TLX); 20 years later. Proc. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soc. Annu. Meet. 50, 904–908 (2006)
Hertzum, M., Holmegaard, K.D.: Perceived time as a measure of mental workload: effects of time constraints and task success. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Inter. 29(1), 26–39 (2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2012.676538
Ishii, H., Wisneski, C., Brave, S., Dahley, A., Gorbet, M., Ulmer, B., Yarin, P.: Ambientroom: integrating ambient media with architectural space. In: Proceedings of CHI 1998 (1998)
Leibowitz, H.W., Shupert, C.L., Post, R.B.: The two modes of visual processing: implications for spatial orientation. In: Peripheral Vision Horizon Display (PVHD) (1984)
Liikkanen, L.A., Gómez, P.G.: Designing interactive systems for the experience of time. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, DPPI 2013, pp. 146–155 (2013)
Mark, G., Gonzalez, V.M., Harris, J.: No task left behind?: examining the nature of fragmented work. In: Proceedings of CHI 2005, CHI 2005, ACM, New York, NY, USA (2005)
Matthews, T., Dey, A.K., Mankoff, J., Carter, S., Rattenbury, T.: A toolkit for managing user attention in peripheral displays. In: Proceedings of UIST (2004). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1029632.1029676
Moraveji, N., Soesanto, C.: Towards stress-less user interfaces: 10 design heuristics based on the psychophysiology of stress. In: CHI 2012 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2012, pp. 1643–1648 (2012)
Müller, H., Kazakova, A., Pielot, M., Heuten, W., Boll, S.: Ambient timer – unobtrusively reminding users of upcoming tasks with ambient light. In: Winckler, M. (ed.) INTERACT 2013, Part I. LNCS, vol. 8117, pp. 211–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Ostendorp, M.C., Harre, A., Jacob, S., Mller, H., Heuten, W., Boll, S.: Ambient progress bar - relaxed and efficient work in waiting periods. In: Mensch & Computer 2013: Interaktive Vielfalt, pp. 221–229 (2013)
Peres, S., Kortum, P., Stallmann, K.: Auditory progress bars: preference, performance and aesthetics. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2007) (2007)
Sokolov, E.: Higher nervous functions: the orienting reflex. Annu. Revs. Physiol. 25, 545–580 (1963)
Weiser, M., Brown, J.S.: Designing calm technology. Powergrid Journal 1, 75–85 (1996)
Wickens, C.D.: Multiple resources and mental workload. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Müller, H., Kazakova, A., Heuten, W., Boll, S. (2015). Lighten Up! — An Ambient Light Progress Bar Using Individually Controllable LEDs. In: De Ruyter, B., Kameas, A., Chatzimisios, P., Mavrommati, I. (eds) Ambient Intelligence. AmI 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9425. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26005-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26005-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26004-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26005-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)