Ambient Displays Supporting Environmentally-Conscious Behavior

Hammerschmidt J. Ambient Displays Supporting Environmentally-Conscious Behavior. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2018.In the natural interaction with our environment, humans draw on a wealth of information without consciously focusing on it. In contrast, the vast majority of interaction with modern technological devices is accomplished through focused attention. This thesis therefore researches the use of _ambient displays_, which convey information at the periphery of attention. As a use case that has been identified as particularly suitable for such interfaces but has not yet been researched very extensively, we have focused on supporting users to act in a more environmentally-conscious way. Furthermore, despite the fact that preliminary research in cognitive psychology and attention theory hints at significant advantages of employing the auditory modality for the peripheral perception of information, the use of sound for the design of ambient displays has been largely neglected so far, which is why we have deliberately explored this approach in our research, including the use of _blended sonification_, where existing environmental sounds are used as the basis for auditory representations of information. In our practical work, we have developed four ambient displays as research vehicles, which cover three distinct settings in order to additionally evaluate the influence of an ambient display's context of use: The _InfoPlant_ is a “living” interface, which we used in a longitudinal study to give feedback on the test subjects' electricity consumption in their apartments. Although we could indeed observe a reduction in consumption, this was only the case for appliances within sight of the feedback display and highly dependent on the users' initial motivation and interest. The _Sonic Shower_ gives auditory feedback on the energy and water consumption while taking a shower, and in an online survey we found that our two blended sonifications were perceived as significantly less intrusive than for example a speech-based design. The _EcoSonic system_ supports users in driving in a more fuel (or energy) efficient way, and in our study we could observe that our two types of auditory feedback led to a significant reduction of consumption as well as a reduced number of glances at the visual consumption display. Finally, the _Slowification system_ provides feedback about the current vehicle speed in consideration of prescribed speed limits and common driving practices based on spatial panning of the car's audio system's sound signal, and in our study, employing a virtual reality driving simulator, we found that speed limits were adhered to significantly better and also observed less deviations from the traffic lane. As can be seen from the individual results, the use of sound can indeed be highly advantageous for ambient displays, as it does not occupy the visual perceptual channel, which is predominantly used for primary activities. Furthermore, it allows for a higher variability in the context of use, which is also of particular importance for the design of ambient displays in general, as it influences the effectiveness of the peripheral information conveyance. Finally, incorporating, or even building on, existing sensory stimuli, as is done for blended sonifications, has shown to contribute to enhancing the unobtrusiveness of ambient displays

EcoSonic: Auditory Peripheral Monitoring of Fuel Consumption for Fuel-Efficient Driving

Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T. EcoSonic: Auditory Peripheral Monitoring of Fuel Consumption for Fuel-Efficient Driving. Displays. 2017;47(SI):40-50.In this paper, we propose to make use of an auditory fuel efficiency display as means to support car drivers in adopting an energy-efficient driving style. We report on the development of the EcoSonic system as a platform for evaluating such displays and present five design approaches to guide their realization. In a study with 30 participants, we evaluated two prototype auditory displays against the baseline of visual-only eco-driving feedback in a within-subject study. Our selected designs are described in full detail. Key findings include a significantly reduced fuel consumption as well as lower engine speeds compared to the visual display. Furthermore, questionnaire analysis results confirm that the auditory conditions are less obtrusive and also seem to allow a more subconscious processing and comprehension of the provided information. Finally, we have found that the affectiveness of the display design seems to have a positive impact on its perceived helpfulness and the ability to absorb its information subconsciously

Slowification: An in-vehicle auditory display providing speed guidance through spatial panning

Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T. Slowification: An in-vehicle auditory display providing speed guidance through spatial panning. Presented at the 5th International Workshop on Interactive Sonification, Bielefeld.We present a novel in-vehicle sonification for providing immediate feedback about the current vehicle speed in consideration of prescribed speed limits and common driving practices. The key conceptual idea of our ``Slowification'' auditory display is to assume that the sound of the car (i.e.~the car's audio system) travels with the allowed (or expected) speed and to virtually position the driver into this space according to the car's current speed,resulting in a sound which moves to the back as one drives faster than allowed and catches up on slowing down. Further changes of the sound for excessive deviations complement this design. We evaluated the Slowification system in a virtual reality based car simulator delivering realistic soundscapes of both engine and media sound placement, showing that it indeed helps the user to drive within speed limits and additionally provides less distraction than a conventional visual speed display. Questionnaire results furthermore indicate that users easily accepted this novel auditory display as an unobtrusive in-vehicle user interface

“I Will Follow You!” – How Recommendation Modality Impacts Processing Fluency and Purchase Intention

Although conversational agents (CA) are increasingly used for providing purchase recommendations, important design questions remain. Across two experiments we examine with a novel fluency mechanism how recommendation modality (speech vs. text) shapes recommendation evaluation (persuasiveness and risk), the intention to follow the recommendation, and how modality interacts with the style of recommendation explanation (verbal vs. numerical). Findings provide robust evidence that text-based CAs outperform speech-based CAs in terms of processing fluency and consumer responses. They show that numerical explanations increase processing fluency and purchase intention of both recommendation modalities. The results underline the importance of processing fluency for the decision to follow a recommendation and highlight that processing fluency can be actively shaped through design decisions in terms of implementing the right modality and aligning it with the optimal explanation style. For practice, we offer actionable implications on how to make effective sales agents out of CAs

Blended Sonification: Sonification for Casual Interaction

Tünnermann R, Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T. Blended Sonification: Sonification for Casual Interaction. In: ICAD 2013 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display. Łódź, Poland; 2013: 119-126.In recent years, graphical user interfaces have become almost ubiquitous in form of notebooks, smartphones and tablets. These systems normally force the user to attend to an often very specific and narrow screen and thus squeeze the information through a chokepoint. This ties the users’ attention to the device and affects other activities and social interaction. In this paper we introduce Blended Sonifications as sonifications that blend into the users’ environment without confronting users with any explicitly perceived technology. Blended Sonification systems can either be used to display information or to provide ambient communication channels. We present a framework that guides developers towards the identification of suitable information sources and appropriate auditory interfaces. We aim at improving the design of interactions and experiences. Along with the introduction and definition of the framework, this paper presents interface examples, both for mediated communication and information display applications

Challenges for Smart Environments in Bathroom Contexts

Leichsenring C, Yang J, Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T. Challenges for Smart Environments in Bathroom Contexts. Presented at the ICMI 2016 Workshop on Embodied Interaction with Smart Environments, Tokyo, Japan.Smart homes have been mostly treated as homogeneous environments where each room is distinguished by the activities performed there but not by any fundamentally different basic parameters for systems to operate in. We argue that at least for bathroom environments, things like the extensive presence of liquid water and humidity and special privacy considerations challenge these assumptions. We discuss typical and unique challenges for ubiquitous computing interfaces in bathroom environments and we look at how actual and conceptual systems confront these challenges. We review bathroom systems in the literature and present two systems of our own to exemplify the unique challenges to smart environments the bathroom provides

InfoPlant: Multimodal augmentation of plants for enhanced human-computer interaction

Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T, Walender A, Krömker N. InfoPlant: Multimodal augmentation of plants for enhanced human-computer interaction. In: Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications. 2015.In this work, we present and evaluate a novel ambient information display that is designed to provide unobtrusive yet engaging feedback. The basis of this display is a natural, living plant, which is augmented in several ways to enable it to indicate information in various different ways. We describe the design and the construction of the InfoPlant, discuss its different modalities and present two demonstrator systems, including a novel eco-feedback display. A subsequent study showed that the InfoPlant was indeed perceived as unobtrusive by the large majority of participants and that it was easily accepted as a possible new entity in a living-room context. Also, the provided feedback was assessed as generally very helpful and that it would make users aware of their resource consumption and could have an influence on their consumption behavior

EcoSonic: Auditory Displays supporting Fuel-Efficient Driving

Hammerschmidt J, Tünnermann R, Hermann T. EcoSonic: Auditory Displays supporting Fuel-Efficient Driving. In: Thomas O, Ebba H, eds. NordiCHI '14 Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational. Helsinki, Finland: ACM New York, NY, USA; 2014: 979-982.In this paper, we present our work towards an auditory display that is capable of supporting a fuel-efficient operation of vehicles. We introduce five design approaches for employing the auditory modality for a fuel economy display. Furthermore, we have implemented a novel auditory display based on one of these approaches, foussing on giving feedback on the engine’s optimal rpm range, which is a major factor for eco-driving. Finally, we report on the development of a simple but physically realistic car simulator, which allows for a reproducible evaluation of prototype auditory displays as well as a comparison to state-of-the-art visual fuel efficiency indicators