Evaluating Peripheral Interaction Design

Abstract

Many actions in the physical world take place in the background or periphery of people's attention. However, interactions with computing technologies usually require focused attention. This article explores the concept of peripheral interaction: physical interaction with technology that takes place outside the focus of attention. A peripheral interaction design (called FireFlies), which supports primary school teachers in their everyday routine through open-ended light-objects on the children's desks, was deployed in 4 classrooms for 6 weeks. Results of interviews and video analysis indicate that the 6 participating teachers were able to physically interact with the FireFlies interactive artifact quickly and frequently without disturbing ongoing tasks. In the final weeks of the study, the teachers seemed able to easily shift their focus of attention between their main task and the interactive system. We therefore conclude that, even though it is difficult to measure people's attention, a longitudinal approach seemed effective to find indicators for peripheral interaction.Saskia Bakker (s.bakker@tue.nl, www.saskiabakker.com) is a design researcher with an interest in research-through-design in everyday environments; she is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Design Department of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Elise van den Hoven (elise.vandenhoven@uts.edu.au, www.elisevandenhoven.com) is a design researcher with an interest in designing physical interaction in an everyday context; she is an Associate Professor in the Design,

Facilitating peripheral interaction: design and evaluation of peripheral interaction for a gesture-based lighting control with multimodal feedback

“…Moreover, this way of evaluating peripheral interaction might offer more ways of categorizing interactions as being ''peripheral.'' Combining different measurements (visual attention and performance) allowed for a detailed assessment of the extent to which interactions with our light pointer took place in the periphery of attention than what has previously been addressed in the related literature [4,6,16,22,25] and offered more insights as to whether a task was indeed still being performed in the periphery instead of being ignored. We propose that this way of assessing of interactions leads to a more extensive review and better understanding of peripheral interactions and how they should be designed.…”

“…We were able to consider not only visual attention and qualitative data (as is the case in most related peripheral interaction research), e.g. [4,6,16,22,25], but also performance measurements on two different tasks and combined results of both measurements in a more extensive review of the interaction. Because of this, we were not only able to indicate that the interaction was likely performed in the periphery of attention (based on the division of visual attention), but we were also able to give some indication of how well participants were able to perform these interactions.…”

“…While these examples focus on peripheral perception of information, a few devices have also been designed for (physical) peripheral interaction [6]. These devices offer the ability to perform physical interactions in the periphery of attention.…”

“…Since it is difficult to find hard evidence for the occurrence of peripheral interaction [6], we focused our analysis on a number of indicators of peripheral interaction as mentioned in the literature.…”

“…Although no clear guidelines are known for evaluating whether an interaction takes place in the periphery of attention, some indications for peripheral interaction can be derived from theory [6]. Different measurements were taken during the experiment based on these indicators to evaluate whether the participants interacted with the light pointer in the periphery of their attention.…”