AwToolkit: attention-aware user interface widgets

Increasing screen real-estate allows for the development of applications where a single user can manage a large amount of data and related tasks through a distributed user interface. However, such users can easily become overloaded and become unaware of display changes as they alternate their attention towards different displays. We propose AwToolkit, a novel widget set for developers that supports users in maintaing awareness in multi-display systems. The AwToolkit widgets automatically determine which display a user is looking at and provide users with notifications with different levels of subtlety to make the user aware of any unattended display changes. The toolkit uses four notification levels (unnoticeable, subtle, intrusive and disruptive), ranging from an almost imperceptible visual change to a clear and visually saliant change. We describe AwToolkit's six widgets, which have been designed for C# developers, and the design of a user study with an application oriented towards healthcare environments. The evaluation results reveal a marked increase in user awareness in comparison to the same application implemented without AwToolkit.