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AuraOrb: using social awareness cues in the design of progressive notification appliances

Published: 20 November 2006 Publication History

Abstract

One of the problems with notification appliances is that they can be distracting when providing information not of immediate interest to the user. In this paper, we present AuraOrb, an ambient notification appliance that deploys progressive turn taking techniques to minimize notification disruptions. AuraOrb uses social awareness cues, such as eye contact to detect user interest in an initially ambient light notification. Once detected, it displays a text message with a notification heading visible from 360 degrees. Touching the orb causes the associated message to be displayed on the user's computer screen. When user interest is lost, AuraOrb automatically reverts back to its idle state.We performed an initial evaluation of AuraOrb's functionality using a set of heuristics tailored to ambient displays. We compared progressive notification with the use of persistent ticker tape notifications and Outlook Express system tray messages for notifying the user of incoming emails. Results of our evaluation suggest that progressive turn taking techniques allowed AuraOrb users to access notification headings with minimal impact on their focus task.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    OZCHI '06: Proceedings of the 18th Australia conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Design: Activities, Artefacts and Environments
    November 2006
    434 pages
    ISBN:1595935452
    DOI:10.1145/1228175
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 20 November 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. Ubicomp
    2. ambient displays
    3. attentive user interfaces
    4. information awareness
    5. notification devices

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    OZCHI '06 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 70 submissions, 51%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

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    Cited By

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    • (2020)Listen Only When Spoken To: Interpersonal Communication Cues as Smart Speaker Privacy ControlsProceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies10.2478/popets-2020-00262020:2(251-270)Online publication date: 8-May-2020
    • (2020)Exploring Non-Urgent Smart Home Notifications using a Smart Plant SystemProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3428361.3428466(47-58)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2020
    • (2020)Designing Ambient Multisensory Notification Devices: Managing Disruptions in the HomeProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3428361.3428400(59-70)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2020
    • (2019)To Beep or Not to Beep? Evaluating Modalities for Multimodal ICU AlarmsMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti30100153:1(15)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2019
    • (2019)WindowWallACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/331027526:2(1-42)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2019
    • (2019)A Comparison of Notification Techniques for Out-of-View Objects in Full-Coverage DisplaysProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300288(1-13)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2018)Designing Metaphor-Based Ambient Tangible Artifacts to Support Workspace Awarenessi-com10.1515/icom-2018-002417:3(219-235)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2018
    • (2016)Glowworms and FirefliesProceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2858036.2858524(5849-5861)Online publication date: 7-May-2016
    • (2016)CubeLendarProceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2851581.2892278(2601-2608)Online publication date: 7-May-2016
    • (2015)Deriving design guidelines for ambient light systemsProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/2836041.2836069(267-277)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2015
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