We are aware of global concerns of sustainability and are encouraged on many fronts to modify our behaviour to save the planet but sometimes this understanding is more intellectual than motivated.An opportunity was identified within the university environment to activate a pilot study to investigate the level of voluntary student engagement in saving energy if a plant/digital interface were introduced.We postulate that people may be more inclined to participate in a "green" activity if they are more directly aware of the benefits. This project also seeks to discover if the introduction of nature (green plants) as the interface would encourage users to increase participation in socially responsive activities.Using plants as the interface offers an immediate sensory connection between the participants and the outcome of their chosen actions. This may generate a deeper awareness of the environment by enabling the participant to realise that their one small action in an ordinary day can contribute positively to larger global issues.

In this paper we describe the preliminary results of a field study which evaluated the use of MiniOrb, a system that employs ambient and tangible interaction mechanisms to allow inhabitants of office environments to report on subjectively perceived office comfort levels. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of ubiquitous computing in the individual control of indoor climate and specifically answer the question to what extent ambient and tangible interaction mechanisms are suited for the task of capturing individual comfort preferences in a non-obtrusive manner. We outline the preliminary results of an in-situ trial of the system.

This paper discusses our project, which focuses on the new possibilities of methods of communication enhanced by digital networks. The aim of the project is to develop prototypes for a system with which the sense of existence of a person and others can be digitally shared and experienced (or digitally coexist) through tangible devices without the need to actively engage in the operation of such devices. While studies of ambient intelligence generally focus on the visualization or experience of everchanging customized information, this project is more specific and looks closely at how one can recognize the existence of other humans in digitally networked remote places. The paper covers the conceptual and technical development of the project by demonstrating a number of prototype developments and a range of development tools utilized including a combination of Macromedia Flash

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We introduce the MiniOrb platform, a combined sensor and interaction platform built to understand and encourage the gathering of data around personal indoor climate preferences in office environments. The platform consists of a sensor device, gathering localised environmental data and an attached tangible interaction and ambient display device. This device allows users to understand their local environment and record preferences with regards to their preferred level of office comfort. In addition to the tangible device we built a web-based mobile application that allowed users to record comfort preferences through a different interface. This paper describes the design goals and technical setup of the MiniOrb platform.