Artistically conveying peripheral information with the InfoCanvas

Abstract

The Internet and World Wide Web have made a tremendous amount of information available to people today. Taking advantage of and managing this information, however, is becoming increasingly challenging due to its volume and the variety of sources available. We attempt to reduce this overload with the InfoCanvas, an ambient display of a personalized, information-driven, visual collage. Through a web-based interface, people identify information of interest, associate a pictorial representation with it, and place the representation on a virtual canvas. The end result is an information collage, displayed on a secondary monitor or net appliance, that allows people to keep tabs on information in a calm, unobtrusive manner. This paper presents details on how a person can create and manage information with the InfoCanvas, and how we provide such capabilities.

Towards balanced discussions in the classroom using ambient information visualisations

“…Skog et al (2003) argue ambient displays should not necessarily be physical in nature. Both small displays such as mobile phones (van Tonder & Wesson, 2008), as well as large displays (Hinrichs, Fisher, & Riche, 2010) are suitable for ambient information systems, and can display artistic (Skog et al, 2003;Eades & Shen, 2004;Miller & Stasko, 2002), informative (Hinrichs et al, 2010) and more traditional visualisations (J. M. DiMicco et al, 2004;JoanMorris DiMicco & Bender, 2007). These AIVs (Skog et al, 2003) move information visualization applications from the desktop computer screen into the environment or periphery of the user.…”

Amelie: A Recombinant Computing Framework for Ambient Awareness

“…GroupDesk [7] is a prototype implementation of the EPM that allows users to stay informed dynamically about events, that happen currently or that have happened in the past in the surroundings of their actual position. Despite that this model did not originally target ambient intelligence it has been adopted for most implementations of ambient awareness prototypes to date, e.g., the InfoCanvas [17] and Nessie [18].…”

Designing an extensible architecture for Personalized Ambient Information

“…behind her back. Another example of an ambient fixture is the InfoCanvas [11,12]. It shows visual representations of information the user can individually pick from the internet (restricted to the services provided for the InfoCanvas).…”

“…Miller et al call this Peripheral Information and divide it into two fundamental modes: Unconditional and Conditional [12]. The first mode is a typical monitoring task -the information is displayed continuously.…”

“…However, this gamut is not fixed but depends on personal habits. As mentioned earlier, customization to individual preferences is an important part for user acceptance [7,11,12].…”