Prompt: What might be “important but not critical” information (c.f., Pousman & Stasko) you might want to monitor over time?
Brainstorm & Sketches
We brainstormed ideas for ambient media where “important but not critical” information is conveyed via non-distracting changes in the physical environment so that users’ focus will not be detracted from their primary tasks but all while staying aware of such important information.
Some ideas we brainstormed for ambient media include:
- Everyone’s/your/the general room’s emotion
- When to water plants
- How your pets are doing/where they are
- State of your food in the fridge
- Air quality (amount of dust) in your room
- Your morning routine
- Whether people are working on a Google doc/group project
Our Ambient Media:
We particularly liked the idea of using an aesthetic thing (ie. a plant, a painting, etc.) as the tangible metaphor of our emotions. Thus, we decided to build upon the idea of what emotion can a plant represent, such as more specifically social battery. The plant first starts off really fresh with all of its leaves lit up, and as you are inundated with messages, notifications, and emails, the leaves wilt and turn off.
This was our favorite brainstorm because today, we constantly receive messages from multiple channels — people may be a part of many Slack channels, group chats, and email inboxes. We typically don’t think about digital messages as a drain on social energy because it feels like each message only takes a few seconds to address, but each little moment adds up. We wanted to capture how the accumulation of each of these tiny social interactions can still exhaust us on a day to day basis. Instead of just displaying the number of hours spent on social apps (which could be stressful and overwhelming), we wanted to simply make users more mindful through the plant as ambient media. By glancing at the plant and noticing that a lot of its leaves has wilted, it may bring the user to realize that they need to spend some time away from all the notifications. They can then click a button on the plant pot to pause/silence all notifications on every platform.
What kind of information you would display peripherally:
- Number of notifications/messages received
- Which social media platforms you have used
Why to choose a certain design:
- Natural metaphor of plants
- Changes of the leaves emulate the natural situations (wilting, becoming brown, falling off)
- Aesthetic
What interactions to include:
- Do not disturb button (click and everything goes dark)
- Tap pot to see metrics (ex. Number of hours spent on social media)
