Defining, designing, and evaluating peripheral displays: an analysis using activity theory

  • Authors:

  • Tara Matthews;Tye Rattenbury;Scott Carter

  • Affiliations:

  • Berkeley Institute of Design, CS Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA;Berkeley Institute of Design, CS Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA;Berkeley Institute of Design, CS Department, University of California Berkeley, CA

  • Venue:
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Peripheral displays are an important class of applications that improve our ability to balance multiple activities. However, peripheral display innovation and development has suffered because much of the past work has been technology driven: There exists little theoretical understanding of how they operate in relation to people's everyday lives. In response to this, we present a framework for understanding, designing, and evaluating peripheral displays based on Activity Theory. We argue that peripheral displays are information displays that become unobtrusive to users. As this quality depends on the context of use, we present a framework for describing peripheral displays based on the number and types of activities they support. Furthermore, we argue that different types of displays require different approaches to evaluation. From our own work and a review of related literature we derive a set of general evaluation criteria for peripheral displays (appeal, learnability, awareness, effects of breakdowns, and distraction). We then describe approaches for evaluating these criteria for different types of peripheral displays and present a case study to illustrate the value of our Activity Theory evaluation framework in practice.