The use of abstraction and motion in the design of social interfaces

In this paper, we explore how dynamic visual cues can be used to create accessible and meaningful social interfaces without raising expectations beyond what is achievable with current technology. Our approach is inspired by research in perceptual causality, which suggests that simple displays in motion can evoke high-level social and emotional content. For our exploration, we iteratively designed and implemented a public social interface using abstraction and motion as design elements. Our interface communicated simple social and emotional content such as displaying happiness when there is high social interaction in the environment. Our qualitative evaluations showed that people frequently and repeatedly interacted with the interface while they tried to make sense of the underlying social content. They also shared their models with others, which led to more social interaction in the environment.