You are cordially invited to an Interaction Design Group seminar.

Where: University of Melbourne, IDEA Lab, Level 4, 111 Barry Street, Carlton
When: August 14 2009, 3.00 - 4.00 pm

Title: Ambient Awareness and Situated Displays

Abstract: Ambient awareness technologies bring information into peripheral attention, allowing people to be aware of the information without necessarily focusing on it or explicitly attending to it.

A number of different techniques can be used to provide information in this manner. Situated displays are one such technology. In this talk, I will describe two projects which have attempted to explore the ideas of ambient awareness from different perspectives and in different application areas.

In the domestic realm, we explored how a situated display might be useful as an SMS communication device. After developing prototype technology we performed an ethnographic evaluation with four households, including two non-family households, and found some interesting results.

In another project, which is ongoing, we are exploring the ways in which software development teams communicate information relating to their day-to-day project status. Having recently completed a qualitative case study with a large software team we are now looking to augment their work practices with technologies drawn from the field of ambient awareness.

Bio: John Downs is a student with the Human-Computer Interaction Research Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.

Please forward to others if interested. All are Welcome.

Further Information: www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/research/groups/interactiondesign/seminars.html