Exploring peripheral interaction design for primary school teachers

This paper explores the concept of peripheral interactions; interactions with technology that take place in the background or periphery of the attention. We present two designs for a classroom setting. CawClock makes selected time frames audible in order to provide teachers with awareness of time. NoteLet is designed to support the teacher in observing children's behavior, by enabling him or her to take pictures of the classroom through straightforward interactions on a bracelet. A qualitative, two-week exploration of both systems in a classroom revealed that the soundscapes of CawClock indeed shifted to the periphery of the attention and supported the teacher's time awareness. The actions with NoteLet did not shift to the periphery. However, the tangible aspects of NoteLet seemed to facilitate the interaction to be quick and simple, which may indicate that it could shift to the periphery with more practice. Tangible interaction therefore seems a promising interaction style for this purpose.

[1]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  Topobo: a constructive assembly system with kinetic memory , 2004, CHI.

[2]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces , 2000, IBM Syst. J..

[3]  Hiroshi Ishii,et al.  ambientROOM: integrating ambient media with architectural space , 1998, CHI Conference Summary.

[4]  Tara Matthews,et al.  A toolkit for managing user attention in peripheral displays , 2004, UIST '04.

[5]  J. H. Eggen,et al.  Home radio : extending the home experience beyond the physical boundaries of the house , 2003 .

[6]  Chris Harrison,et al.  Whack gestures: inexact and inattentive interaction with mobile devices , 2010, TEI '10.

[7]  Elise van den Hoven,et al.  Design research & tangible interaction , 2007, TEI.

[8]  Erik Stolterman,et al.  Issues in evaluating ambient displays in the wild: two case studies , 2011, CHI.

[9]  Allison Druin,et al.  Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families , 2003, CHI '03.

[10]  John Seely Brown,et al.  The coming age of calm technolgy , 1997 .

[11]  Dimitrios Tzovaras.  Multimodal User Interfaces , 2008 .

[12]  John T. Stasko,et al.  A taxonomy of ambient information systems: four patterns of design , 2006, AVI '06.

[13]  Tim Shallice,et al.  Supervisory control of action and thought selection. , 1993 .

[14]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Where the action is , 2001 .

[15]  C. Wickens,et al.  Applied Attention Theory , 2007 .

[16]  Elise van den Hoven,et al.  Framing tangible interaction frameworks , 2009, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[17]  A. Treisman.  VERBAL CUES, LANGUAGE, AND MEANING IN SELECTIVE ATTENTION. , 1964, The American journal of psychology.

[18]  Mitchel Resnick,et al.  Extending tangible interfaces for education: digital montessori-inspired manipulatives , 2005, CHI.

[19]  Alan F. Blackwell,et al.  Peripheral tangible interaction by analytic design , 2009, Tangible and Embedded Interaction.

[20]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Attention and Effort , 1973 .

[21]  Elise van den Hoven,et al.  Knowing by ear: leveraging human attention abilities in interaction design , 2012, Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces.

[22]  A. Baddeley,et al.  Attention : selection, awareness, and control : a tribute to Donald Broadbent , 1996 .

[23]  Elise van den Hoven,et al.  Acting by hand: Informing interaction design for the periphery of people's attention , 2012, Interact. Comput..