LaughingLily: Using a Flower as a Real World Information Display

Ambient displays and calm technology as termed by Weiser and Brown [5] are key techniques to help ubiquitous computing applications enter our everyday life. Here we present an ambient display in the form of a physical object that can be moved around in physical space, thus being highly adaptive to the users needs. LaughingLily is an artificial Lily enhanced with an electromechanical system that enables the flower to let its petals hang or open them up to full bloom. Using the flower as a meeting mediator we show how well it can be integrated into the real world and how easily it is accepted by potential users.