Peripheral interaction : characteristics and considerations
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Bakker, S., Hoven, van den, E. A. W. H., & Eggen, J. H. (2015). Peripheral interaction : characteristics and
considerations. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 19(1), 239-254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-014-0775-2
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10.1007/s00779-014-0775-2
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Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
DOI 10.1007/s00779-014-0775-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Peripheral interaction: characteristics and considerations
Saskia Bakker • Elise van den Hoven
Berry Eggen
•
Received: 8 May 2013 / Accepted: 23 April 2014 / Published online: 8 May 2014
Ó Springer-Verlag London 2014
Abstract In everyday life, we are able to perceive
information and perform physical actions in the background or periphery of attention. Inspired by this observation, several researchers have studied interactive systems
that display digital information in the periphery of attention. To broaden the scope of this research direction, a few
recent studies have focused on interactive systems that can
not only be perceived in the background but also enable
users to physically interact with digital information in their
periphery. Such peripheral interaction designs can support
computing technology to fluently embed in and become a
meaningful part of people’s everyday routines. With the
increasing ubiquity of technology in our everyday environment, we believe that this direction is highly relevant
nowadays. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of three
case studies on peripheral interaction. These case studies
involved the design and development of peripheral interactive systems and deployment of these systems in the real
context of use for a number of weeks. Based on the insights
gained through these case studies, we discuss generalized
characteristics and considerations for peripheral interaction
design and evaluation. The aim of the work presented in
this paper is to support interaction design researchers and
practitioners in anticipating and facilitating peripheral
interaction with the designs they are evaluating or
developing.
S. Bakker (&) E. van den Hoven B. Eggen
Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University
of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven,
The Netherlands
e-mail: s.bakker@tue.nl
E. van den Hoven
Design, Architecture and Building Faculty, University of
Technology, Sydney, Australia
Keywords Peripheral interaction Tangible interaction
Audio Calm technology User-centered design
User evaluation
1 Introduction
Computing technology is becoming increasingly present in
our everyday environment. These technologies are often
equipped with user interfaces such as keyboards and touch
screens: traditional methods of human–computer interaction (HCI) that typically require focused attention during
interaction. As a result of these developments, researchers
in the field of HCI have foreseen a challenge in fluently
embedding computing technologies in people’s everyday
routines [1–3]. To address this challenge, Weiser and
Brown envisioned calm technology [3], an approach
inspired by the observation that many interactions with the
physical world take place in the background or periphery
of attention, while they may also engage the center of
attention when this is relevant or desired. For example, we
are aware of what the weather is like, or we can drink
coffee from a cup without conscious thought, while we
may also intentionally look outside to see if it is raining, or
intentionally sip from our cup to check if the temperature is
right. These activities are available to be undertaken in the
periphery of attention, but can easily shift to the center of
attention and back.
The approach of employing the periphery of attention
when interacting with computing technology was initially
presented as calm technology [3] and later explored under a
number of terms such as ambient information systems [4]
and peripheral displays [5]. These research areas focus on
presenting information that is to be perceived in the
periphery of attention. Recently, a few studies have been
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conducted under the term peripheral interaction [6–9],
aiming to broaden the scope of calm technology by
designing not only for the perceptual periphery but also
enabling users to physically interact with the digital world
in their periphery. The authors have been active in this area
by developing and evaluating a number of peripheral
interaction designs for a primary school context [9, 10].
These and related studies [6–8] have provided preliminary
support for the feasibility of interactions with technology
taking place in the periphery of attention.
Given the increasing number of interactive systems that
support everyday activities, it seems impossible and undesirable for all technology to be in our center of attention. In
fact, it appears inevitable that many interactions with
everyday interactive systems will at times take place in the
periphery of attention. Since traditional methods of HCI are
intended for interaction in the center of attention, we believe
that the alternative approach of peripheral interaction may
be beneficial for many researchers and practitioners in the
area of interaction design.
This paper addresses the question: How can HCI
researchers and practitioners anticipate, facilitate and
evaluate peripheral interaction with the interactive systems
they are studying or developing? After addressing background literature, we explore this question through an indepth analysis of three case studies on peripheral interaction design and evaluation: CawClock [10], NoteLet [10]
and FireFlies [9]. Abstracted from both literature and these
case studies, this paper first discusses two generalized
essential characteristics of peripheral interaction. Next, we
discuss how these characteristics may be taken into account
in interaction design and research, by presenting considerations for peripheral interaction.
2 Background
This paper presents characteristics of and considerations
for peripheral interaction design and evaluation. In this
section, we will first address divided attention and multitasking theory, in which peripheral interaction is grounded.
Subsequently, we will discuss examples of related
research and design in the area of peripheral interaction.
2.1 Divided attention and multitasking theory
The concept of peripheral interaction originates in the
observation that in many everyday life situations, multiple
activities can be performed at once. This phenomenon is
elaborately addressed by divided attention theory [11, 12],
which describes attention as a finite amount of mental
resources that can be divided over different activities.
These activities can be bodily (e.g. walking), cognitive (e.g.
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Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
thinking) or sensorial (e.g. listening to music). When such
activities require only few resources, multiple activities can
be performed at once. The resource demand of activities
depends on several factors such as the difficulty of the
operation. Additionally, the automaticity [13] or habituation [14, 15] of activities influences the amount of
resources required: activities that have been trained
extensively, such as walking, require only few mental
resources. The division of resources over activities is furthermore influenced by the likelihood of activities being
performed, which is managed by the supervisory attentional system [16]. For example, when cooking, one is
more likely to open the refrigerator than to start typing an
email on the laptop at the kitchen table, even though both
activities are equally available. Resources are thus more
likely to be allocated to certain activities than to others.
While divided attention theory describes attention as the
division of mental resources over different activities, these
resources cannot arbitrarily be divided: concurrent multitasking [17] is only feasible under certain conditions. This
is clarified in the theory of threaded cognition [18], which
describes each activity a person is performing as a cognitive thread. Multiple threads can be active at the same time,
for example, we can easily drive a car (thread one) and
listen to the radio (thread two) at the same time, as also
evident from multiple resource theory [19]. Next to the socalled central procedural resource, which coordinates the
execution of multiple threads, these threads can make use
of various ‘peripheral resources,’ such as visual resources,
motor resources or memory resources [20]. As described
by threaded cognition theory [18], each particular resource
can only be used by one thread at a time. For example,
since one can only look at one visual object at the time, a
person who is driving while using a navigation system can
only look at either the road or the navigation system’s
display. When both require visual attention, a bottleneck
[20] occurs and one of these two threads must wait before
the visual resource is free. Therefore, the extent to which
two activities can be performed in parallel depends on their
stage of execution and the particular resources they require.
In the area of visual perception, the word periphery is
often used when referring to the parts of vision that occur
outside the center of the visual field [12]. Authors in the
area of HCI generally use the term periphery in a broader
context, to name ‘what we are attuned to without attending
to explicitly’ [3, p. 79]. In line with divided attention
theory, we describe the center of attention as the one
activity to which most mental resources are currently
allocated, while the periphery consists of all other activities
(also see [21]). An activity can therefore be performed in
the periphery of attention when another activity is being
performed simultaneously in the center of attention, which
requires more mental resources.
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
2.2 Related research and design
The observation that traditional implementations of HCI
demand focused attention, which prevents them from being
seamlessly integrated into the everyday world, was first
observed by Weiser et al. [2, 3]. They suggested that
computing technology should vanish into the background,
not only by ‘hiding’ it in the environment, but rather by
integrating their use in the everyday routine such that
interactions can take place outside the focus of attention.
Weiser and Brown [3] later coined the term calm technology, which ‘engages both the center and the periphery
of our attention, and in fact moves back and forth between
the two’ [3, p. 79]. As they envisioned, when interactions
with technology would be available to be undertaken both
in the user’s periphery and center of attention, people could
be in control of technology without being overburdened by
it. Similar to interactions with our everyday environment,
calm technology is intended to support technology in
becoming a seamless or unremarkable [1] part of everyday
routines.
Building on the ideas of Weiser et al. [3], many
researchers have aimed to employ the user’s periphery of
attention. Although the initial idea of calm technology did
not specifically focus on peripheral perception, by far most
of the work it inspired aimed to develop and evaluate visual
and auditory displays which subtly present information
such that people can perceive it in their periphery of
attention [4, 22–26]. An early example of a calm technology design is the Dangling String [3], a ‘plastic spaghetti
string’ that spins based on the information sent through the
Ethernet cable, forming a visual and auditory display which
subtly presents the network activity. Pinwheels [27] is a
large-scale installations of pinwheels whose physical
motion can represent various types of digital data, such as
the activity of people in the room in which it is installed.
Water lamp [28] shows the heartbeat of a significant other
as shadows of water ripples on the ceiling to promote a
feeling of connectedness. SnowGlobe [29] also aims to
support social connectedness between two remote living
rooms, through subtle light changes on a physical artifact.
Specific for the office environment, Audio Aura [26] uses
background auditory cues to provide office workers with
information such as the availability of colleagues. ShareMon [30] is an application that enables computer users to
monitor background file sharing events through audio.
Only few recent studies are known that explored physical interactions with technology to take place in the
periphery of attention. Edge and Blackwell [7] present a
design that consists of digitally augmented physical tokens
that can be manipulated on the side of the office workspace
outside the visual focus. StaTube [6] is a peripheral interaction design that can be physically manipulated to set and
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change the user’s instant messaging status, while the status
of contacts is subtly presented through colored light.
Similarly, Olivera et al. [8] studied physical six- and
twelve-sided dice that could be peripherally rotated and
placed on one of their sides to set the user’s social network
availability status. PinchWatch [31] is a wrist-worn device
that recognizes gestures made with hand and fingers such
as sliding with one finger along another finger. These
gestures can be performed during other activities, and they
can be interpreted as input by PinchWatch, e.g., to adjust
the volume of a music player. Similarly, Whack Gestures
[32] are ‘inexact and inattentive interactions’ [32, p. 109]
through which a user can respond to a cue on his mobile
phone or PDA by firmly striking the device while it is in his
pocket.
In everyday life situations, both actions and perceptions
seem to shift between the center and periphery of attention.
The area of peripheral interaction [6–9], which aims to
fluently embed meaningful interactive systems into people’s everyday lives, therefore encompasses both perceptions of and interactions with computing technology. Such
perceptions and interactions can take place in the periphery
of attention and shift to the center of attention when relevant for or desired by the user. In order to cover a broad
range of interaction possibilities, the three case studies we
discuss in this paper explore three approaches to peripheral
interaction: (1) peripheral perception, (2) physical peripheral interaction and (3) a combination of the two.
3 Peripheral interaction case studies
The aim of this paper is to present characteristics of and
considerations for peripheral interaction, which may support HCI researchers and practitioners in anticipating,
facilitating and evaluating interactions with everyday
interactive systems that can shift between center and
periphery of attention. We identified these characteristics
and considerations based on extensive previous work in the
area of peripheral interaction, represented here by three
case studies.
Each of these case studies was conducted in the context
of a primary school, with the teachers as the main users of
the peripheral interaction designs. The reason for selecting
this target group is that the everyday routine of primary
school teachers is characterized by a large number of
activities, such as explaining lessons to the class and giving
instructions individually or in groups. Next to these primary tasks, several secondary tasks have to be performed
as well, such as handing out assignments, monitoring the
children’s progress, keeping track of the time and preparing
the next lesson. Although some of these secondary tasks
could valuably be supported by technology, the
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technologies currently present in the classroom, e.g.,
interactive whiteboards and desktop computers, seem
unsuitable since they require focused attention. We therefore believe that primary school teachers are a promising
target group for peripheral interaction.
In the case studies presented in this section, we adopted
a research-through-design [33, 34] approach, which
involved the design, development and evaluation of prototype versions of interactive systems. These prototypes
should be considered research tools developed to explore
the concept of peripheral interaction, rather than finished
products. Since peripheral interaction aims to enable
interactive systems to fluently embed into people’s everyday routines, each prototype was evaluated in the real
context of a classroom for a few weeks. The first case study
explores peripheral perception of information through a
design called CawClock [10] while the second case study
involves a design called NoteLet [10] intended for physical
interaction that is to take place in the periphery of attention.
The third, more elaborate, case study combines peripheral
perception with physical interaction in an interactive system called FireFlies [9], which builds on the earlier two
case studies.
3.1 CawClock
CawClock [10], see Fig. 1, is an interactive clock intended
for the first grades of primary school in the Netherlands.
These grades consist of 4- to 6-year-old children, many of
whom are not yet able to read the clock. CawClock is
intended to support time awareness, and it displays the time
as a regular analog clock. Furthermore, four physical
tokens are available, each with its own color and image of
an animal on it. The teacher can place these tokens on the
clock to mark a time frame. For example, when at 10.30 h,
the teacher wants to instruct the children to work on an
assignment until 10.45 h, she can place a token next to the
9 of the clock, where the clock’s minute hand will be at
10.45 h. As a result, the part of the clock between the 6 and
the 9 (the current time and the end of the time frame) will
be colored in the color of the token. While the time frame
is ongoing, a background soundscape is played that corresponds to the animal on the token (e.g., cat sounds, bird
sounds), informing the teacher and children that the time
frame is ongoing. To indicate how much time has
approximately passed, the soundscape gradually changes;
the number of animals heard increases toward the end of
the time frame. The audio of CawClock is intended to
provide peripheral awareness of marked time frames.
A fully functioning prototype version of CawClock was
deployed for 2 weeks in a primary school classroom, in
which the teacher used the design for 6 days. This
deployment was evaluated through informal observations
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in the classroom, an individual interview with the participating teacher and a group interview with the participating
teacher and two of her colleagues.
3.2 NoteLet
NoteLet [10], see Fig. 2, is intended to support the teacher
in observing children’s behavior, by enabling him or her to
take pictures of the classroom through peripheral interactions on a bracelet. An important secondary task of primary
school teachers is to keep track of the children’s development over time, in areas such as motor skills, social skills
and language. Observations of children’s behavior are used
as input for evaluating these developments. For example,
when a teacher sees a child collaborating well with another
child, a note needs to be taken. Though important, taking
these notes often distracts teachers from their main tasks.
NoteLet consists of a bracelet that the teacher can wear
around the wrist. When the teacher squeezes his or her
wrist, a camera located in the corner of the classroom takes
a picture. This picture is stored on the teacher’s computer
along with the date and time. Alternatively, teachers can
use the back of the bracelet, on which the names of all
children are listed. When touching the area next to a name,
not only a picture but also the child’s name is stored,
making the recorded information more detailed. The teacher can use these pictures at the end of every few days
when entering observations in the computer. Since NoteLet
is a wearable design, it can be at hand any moment. Taking
pictures is intended to be a quick and straightforward
action that can potentially be performed in the periphery of
attention.
A working prototype version of NoteLet was deployed
in a primary school classroom for 2 weeks. Similar to the
deployment of CawClock, the teacher used the design for
6 days, and observations and interviews were conducted
for evaluation.
3.3 FireFlies
Building on the CawClock and NoteLet designs, we conducted a third case study in which we developed a design
called FireFlies [9]. This design was developed for the
third, fourth and sixth grades (children’s ages 6–9) of primary schools in the Netherlands and is intended to support
various secondary tasks of teachers. FireFlies, see Fig. 3, is
an open-ended design which consists of three separate
design elements: the light-objects, the soundscape and the
teacher-tool.
As part of the FireFlies design, each child has a lightobject on his desk, which can light up in red, green, blue or
yellow, or the light can be off, see Fig. 3. While one or
more light-objects are on, an ongoing background
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
243
Fig. 1 Illustration of peripheral
interaction design CawClock
(top) and the prototype version
of the design deployed in a
primary school classroom
(bottom)
soundscape of nature sounds is played depending on the
colors that are currently in use. Each color is connected to a
specific nature sound: bird sounds (yellow), ocean sounds
(blue), cricket sounds (green) and owl sounds (red). The
soundscape is designed as a peripheral auditory display,
which can be used to obtain overall background awareness
of the current colors of the light-objects, without having to
look at them. The teacher can set the colors of the lightobjects and thereby influence the soundscape through
interactions on the teacher-tool, see Fig. 3. This is done by
first selecting a color using the slider on the top of the tool.
Each child is represented by a bead attached to a string on
the bottom of the tool. To set a child’s light-object to the
selected color, the teacher squeezes the corresponding
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Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
a task or to collaborate with their neighbors) and to communicate short messages to individual children (e.g., calling
a child to the teacher, sending a child to work on the computer, giving a child a compliment). The deployments of
FireFlies were evaluated through formal and informal video
analyses and through interviews with teachers and children.
3.4 Connection between case studies
Of the three presented case studies, FireFlies was clearly
the most elaborate study: the design built on the designs of
CawClock and Notelet and the evaluation of FireFlies were
much more extensive compared to the evaluations performed in the two earlier case studies. As a result, we
gained more elaborate insights in and more detailed
examples of peripheral interaction in the FireFlies case
study, and several of these insights also confirmed findings
of the studies with CawClock and NoteLet. While many of
the examples we describe in the coming sections may come
from the FireFlies case study, the generalized characteristics and considerations we present in this paper therefore
resulted from all three case studies.
4 Characteristics of peripheral interaction
Fig. 2 Illustration of peripheral interaction design NoteLet (top) and
pictures of the NoteLet prototype: manipulating the bracelet to take a
picture without (middle) or with (bottom) a name
bead. Alternatively, teachers can set all light-objects to the
same color at once using the button labeled ‘everyone’ on
the top part of the teacher-tool. The teacher-tool can be
clipped to the teacher’s clothes to easily carry it around the
classroom. The interactions with the teacher-tool are
intended to be quick and easy so that they can be performed
during the everyday routine in the periphery of attention.
The purpose of FireFlies is open-ended: it is not predefined
for which goals and at which moments FireFlies should be
used; this can be chosen by teacher. We thereby aimed to
make sure that teachers would be able to use FireFlies for a
personally relevant goal.
A fully functioning prototype of FireFlies was deployed in
four different primary school classrooms for 6 weeks each.
Participating teachers used FireFlies to indicate what the
children were expected to do (e.g., to work independently on
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The aim of this paper is to present generalized insights in
peripheral interaction design and evaluation in order to
support HCI researchers and practitioners in anticipating
and facilitating their design being used both in the
periphery and the center of attention. As a first step to reach
this objective, this section presents two main characteristics
of peripheral interaction: shifts between center and
periphery of attention and peripheral interaction’s personal nature. These characteristics are elaborated by discussing how they are grounded in our case studies and by
underpinning them with theory. In Sect. 5, we explain how
these characteristics can be considered in the design and
evaluation of peripheral interaction.
4.1 Shifts between center and periphery of attention
The intention of peripheral interaction is to enable everyday interactive systems to be available in the periphery of
attention where they may easily shift to the center of
attention and back. Such shifts are therefore an important
characteristic of peripheral interaction. In our case studies,
we gained more specific insights in how such shifts may
take place, which we will elaborate on in this section. We
start with a detailed look at how single interactions can
shift between center and periphery, followed by a contextual look in which we discuss the relation of these shifts to
the context in which they take place.
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
245
Fig. 3 Pictures of the FireFlies
prototype: a light-object lit in
different colors (top); the
teacher-tool when selecting a
color, selecting a child’s name
and clipped to the user’s
clothes; and FireFlies deployed
in a primary school classroom
4.1.1 A detailed look
In the evaluations of particularly NoteLet and FireFlies, we
found it valuable to split up the interactions into smaller
stages of action when discussing whether they took place in
the participant’s periphery of attention. In other words,
single interactions shifted from the center to the periphery
of attention and back, in between different stages of this
interaction. We can clarify this by discussing peripheral
interaction in the light of Norman’s action cycle [35], see
Fig. 4. Norman’s action cycle is a frequently used model to
describe interactions with technology (for example [36,
37]), and it seems particularly suitable to describe
peripheral interaction as well. In our view, peripheral
interaction encompasses both action and perception, and
Norman’s action cycle clearly binds these two aspects of
interaction in one comprehensive model.
According to Norman’s action cycle, an action consists
of seven stages. In order to discuss how interactions may
shift between center and periphery of attention, we will
apply this model to example interactions with FireFlies. In
Fig. 5, we present three example interactions, which are
inspired by the teacher’s interactions we observed during
the deployment of FireFlies [9]. For each example, Fig. 5
illustrates the way it complies with Norman’s action cycle,
and its potential shifts between center and periphery of
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Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
automatically grabbed the tool without actively deciding to
do so. Later, it shifted to the center of attention to locate the
correct child’s name and back to the periphery when evaluating if the interaction was successful. As shown in this and
the other examples in Fig. 5, these shifts can happen quickly
and frequently, between different stages of interactions.
Even short interactions that may require only a few seconds
can shift between center and periphery while the interaction
is ongoing.
4.1.2 A contextual look
Fig. 4 Norman’s action cycle [35, p. 47]
attention. The illustrations in Fig. 5 are hypothetical and
intended to feed the discussion below rather than to provide
an accurate and conclusive overview of how the participating teachers’ interactions with FireFlies shifted between
the center and periphery of attention.
Figure 5a illustrates a situation in which a teacher uses
FireFlies to give a child a compliment by making his lightobject green. The interaction starts when the teacher
observes that the child is working well and decides to give
him a compliment. After forming this goal, the teacher
forms the intention to use FireFlies to reach this goal. Next,
the teacher specifies an action-sequence and executes this
sequence: she grabs the teacher-tool, locates the color
green, slides the color slider to this color, locates the correct child’s name and selects this name by squeezing the
bead on which it is printed. The teacher then perceives the
result of her interaction: she sees a green light on the
child’s desk, she hears cricket sounds in the soundscape
which reveal that the color green is currently in use and she
hears or sees the child’s reaction to the compliment. The
teacher can interpret from these perceptions that indeed the
light turned green and evaluate that her goal of giving a
compliment was reached. The other two examples in Fig. 5
also illustrate interactions with FireFlies, which go through
the same seven stages of action, be it in a slightly different
manner. The interaction illustrated in Fig. 5b for example
starts with a perception rather than by forming a goal, and
the example in Fig. 5c shows an interaction that is shortly
interrupted by another activity.
As shown in Fig. 5, some stages of interactions may take
place in the periphery, while other stages can be in the center
of attention. The interaction in Fig. 5a for example started in
the center of attention when the teacher consciously decided
to give a compliment, but shifted to the periphery of attention when deciding do to this with FireFlies: the teacher
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From the previous section, it becomes clear that interactions can shift back and forth between the center and
periphery of attention, at different stages of these interactions. While this gives an interesting detailed view on
single interactions, we also realize that interactions with
everyday interactive systems do not stand on their own, but
strongly depend on their context and the user’s everyday
routine.
The main aim of peripheral interaction is to support
everyday interactions with technology to meaningfully
blend into the daily routine in a real-world environment. In
the everyday world, multiple activities are taking place at
once. For example, the teacher in the scenario illustrated in
Fig. 5c is interacting with FireFlies to call two children to
her desk. However, at the same time, she may be
explaining what exercise the children need to do, walking
to her desk, remembering to have an absent child redo the
exercise tomorrow, seeing a child raise his hand to ask a
question, hearing two children in the back chatting and
seeing a child’s pencil fall on the floor. This scenario seems
chaotic but such ‘chaos’ seems common practice in many
everyday situations. All these individual actions and perceptions can be described through the stages of Norman’s
action cycle [35]. This means that, in everyday situations,
numerous sequences of action are performed at the same
time. Though the examples in Fig. 5 each show only one
line that represents an activity, in reality, numerous lines
are present which move crisscross between center and
periphery of attention. The teacher in the previous scenario
may shortly discard her interaction with FireFlies to answer
the question of the child who raises his hand (also see
Fig. 5c); she may continue her explanation while walking
to her desk and picking up a pencil that fell on the floor;
and she may form the intention of writing down a reminder
about the absent child, but discard that activity after
hearing two children chat and deciding that correcting them
is currently more urgent. As this example illustrates, in
real-world situations, multiple activities are being performed at the same time, activities may start and end in the
middle of the action cycle and stages of the cycle may
completely be skipped or activities may be discarded.
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
247
Fig. 5 Three example
interactions with FireFlies, and
the way these examples may
shift between the center and
periphery of attention at
different stages of Norman’s
action cycle [35]. The start of
each interaction is indicated by
a black circle and the end by a
short black bar. Stages of
interaction are indicated by
dotted circles and explained in
text
Therefore, when discussing how and why interactions may
shift between center and periphery of attention, we should
not only look at the step-by-step description of such
interactions but also realize that these interactions cannot
be seen apart from the users’, possibly chaotic, everyday
contexts and routines.
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4.2 Peripheral interaction’s personal nature
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
The above discussion reveals that interactions may frequently shift between the periphery and the center of
attention and are strongly connected to the contexts and the
routines that these are a part of. Based on theory of divided
attention and multitasking (as described in Sect. 2.1),
actions may shift between periphery and center of attention
as a result of various factors, such as difficulty [13] of the
operation or habituation [14, 15] of the activity. These
factors may clearly differ from person to person: Habituation happens only if individuals gain experience in performing an activity, and certain activities may simply be
more difficult for one person than for another. Therefore, a
second characteristic of peripheral interaction is that it is
highly personal. As became clear from our case studies, the
personal nature of peripheral interaction is mainly manifested in the observation that it requires both learning and
unlearning and in the individual users’ personal mind-set.
Similar to interactions with the FireFlies teacher-tool,
interactions with the NoteLet bracelet required selecting
individual children’s names from a list. Interestingly, in the
evaluation of NoteLet, we did not observe situations in
which teachers automatically performed a habituated other
activity while they were planning to use NoteLet. This can
be explained by the fact that interactions with NoteLet,
taking quick pictures of the classroom in order to remember events later on, were not directly replacing existing
activities in the routine of the participating teacher.
Therefore, this teacher only needed to learn to work with
NoteLet, without unlearning other activities.
Clearly, habituation of an interaction depends not only
on the ease with which an individual user can learn to work
with the interactive system but also on existing routines
that are replaced by the interaction. Since these routines
may differ between users, an activity may easily become
habituated for one user while this may require more time
for another user.
4.2.1 Learning and unlearning
4.2.2 Personal mind-set
Since interactions can shift to the periphery of attention
when they are habituated [14, 15], getting used to an
interaction is needed before it can potentially become a
peripheral interaction. In the FireFlies case study, we
observed that some elements of the design could quickly be
learned and potentially become habituated, while this
required more time for other elements. This also differed
between individual teachers. Most teachers for example
rather quickly understood how they could manipulate the
teacher-tool to change the colors of the light-objects. These
color changes also influenced the soundscape, which represented each color that was in use though a specific nature
sound. Different from the interactions on the teacher-tool,
the mapping between colors and sounds (e.g., yellow was
connected to bird sounds and blue to ocean sounds)
required some time to get used to: only after using it a
couple of times, teachers were able to directly interpret that
yellow lights were on when hearing bird sounds. The
learning process that seemed to require most time was
related to the decision to use FireFlies for a certain purpose. Since the purpose for which most participants used
FireFlies replaced a way of working that was already
habituated, they found it difficult to get used to applying
FireFlies rather than the habituated other activity. For
example, when a teacher wanted to give a child a compliment, she often had already given it verbally before
realizing that she had planned to use FireFlies for that
purpose. This example indicates that it may in many cases
not only be required to learn to work with an interactive
system but also to unlearn another activity.
Apart from individual differences in terms of learning and
habituation, our case studies also revealed examples in
which the personal mind-set of different users influenced
the extent to which the designs could be used in the
periphery of attention. For example, in the evaluation of
CawClock [10], the participating teacher described a situation in which she had used the cat token to set a 20-min
time frame on CawClock. In these 20 min, during which
cat sounds were heard in the background, the children had
to work independently on a task. Although she did not
inform the children, she also wanted to use these 20 min to
have a quick individual talk with each child. Hearing the
cat sounds therefore informed her that she still had some
time left for individual talks. The information the teacher
gained from hearing the soundscape and seeing the clock
(i.e., information about the number of children she could
talk to) could clearly only be extracted in that context and
by that particular user. Users with another mind-set at that
moment, e.g., the children, likely extracted completely
different information from the same audio and visuals.
Another example was seen in the case study with FireFlies. After the deployment, we asked the participating
teachers about their suggestions for improvements to the
teacher-tool design. These discussions revealed that some
teachers would have liked the children’s names to be listed
in the same way the children were sitting in the classroom
as they preferred this spatial orientation to easily find the
right name. Other teachers however preferred an alphabetical order, which they found easier to remember. This
example reveals that one user’s way of reasoning may not
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correspond to another user’s way of reasoning, influencing
the ease with which an activity can become habituated.
Clearly, an interactive system may more easily shift
between periphery and center of attention, for one user
compared to another user. This holds not only for the
purpose for which an interactive system is to be used but
also for the exact way the user interacts with it. This means
that an interactive system may easily facilitate peripheral
interaction for one user, while this will not as easily be
achieved for another user.
5 Considerations for peripheral interaction
Since the number of interactive system in our everyday
environment is rapidly increasing, it seems inevitable that
not all of our interactions with these systems can take place
in our center of attention. Certain interactions will shift to
the periphery of attention where they require fewer mental
resources and can be performed in parallel to other activities. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to
support HCI researchers and practitioners in anticipating
and facilitating peripheral interaction with the interactive
systems they are studying or developing. In the previous
section, we have laid out two main characteristics of
peripheral interaction: its shifts between center and
periphery and its personal nature. When developing or
evaluating interactive systems that are to facilitate
peripheral interaction, it is therefore important to consider
to which extent these systems (1) support shifts between
center and periphery and to which extent they (2) support
personal differences. Aiming to provide an overview of
lessons learned, this section discusses how we approached
these challenges in our case studies. We start this section
by addressing when to consider peripheral interaction.
5.1 When to consider peripheral interaction?
While we believe that many interactive systems may
benefit from peripheral interaction, we also realize that for
some systems, it seems undesirable that they shift to the
periphery of attention. A fire alarm, for example, seems
always of such significant importance that it requires
conscious attention. Similarly, interactions that should not
go wrong, such as changing your password for an online
service, are unsuitable to be performed in the periphery.
Other interactions seem highly engaging most of the time,
as a result of which a user likely chooses to focus attention
on it. For example, a very engaging computer game preferably seems to be played in the center rather than in the
periphery of attention.
Different from these examples, most interactions will
not always engage the user’s center of attention. Think for
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example of systems that help you to keep track of relevant
but not crucial information (e.g., the weather or the activities of friends and family), systems to support remembering upcoming agenda items and tasks (e.g., keeping a
grocery list or remembering to call someone), or systems
for everyday tasks at home, such as setting your alarm
clock or controlling your lighting system. Interactions with
such systems may at moments be very significant (e.g.,
when an important agenda item is coming up that cannot be
forgotten) or engaging (e.g., when finding out that the
weather will be beautiful on a day in which you planned to
go on vacation), while in other cases, these interactions are
relevant but not crucial. In these latter situations, such
interactions are typically performed as a part of the
everyday routine and form an ‘unremarkable’ part of this
routine [1]. Such systems could, in our view, clearly benefit
from peripheral interaction, and we describe such systems
using the term ‘everyday interactive systems’.
5.2 Supporting shifts between center and periphery
One of the main characteristics of peripheral interaction is
the frequent shifts of such interaction between center and
periphery of attention. As discussed before, these shifts
happen depend largely on the context in which the interaction takes place. In this section, we discuss what we think
is important to consider when aiming to facilitate interactions in shifting between center and periphery of attention.
5.2.1 Taking into account context and routine
In the design and development of everyday interactive
systems, a detailed understanding of the context of use is
important. This is widely recognized in related literature,
which for example states that a primary concern for ubiquitous computing research and practice is ‘the potential
relationship between computation and the context in which
it is embedded’ [38]. Also for the facilitation of peripheral
interaction with everyday interactive systems, a detailed
understanding of the context in which these interactions are
to take place is important. Several views have been published on what it means to understand context [39–41].
Additionally, more practical approaches on how to visualize and communicate context in a design process have
been developed [42]. These related studies suggest that
understanding the context of use does not only mean
having an image of the locations that are involved but also
include understanding other contextual aspects such as the
social context and the activities that are part of the
everyday routine.
Through the case studies presented, we realized that
particularly for peripheral interaction, an understanding of
the user’s context should involve a detailed image of the
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different mental resources that users require in their
everyday routines. When gaining an understanding of the
classroom context in the process of designing CawClock,
NoteLet and FireFlies for example, we quickly realized
that many of the teachers’ tasks are visual, such as keeping
an eye on the children or using the whiteboard for explanations. These tasks are therefore using the teacher’s visual
resources. When multiple visual tasks are performed
simultaneously, a bottleneck occurs [17, 18] and one
activity needs to wait before it can be executed. To prevent
such bottlenecks from happening and thereby to support
concurrent multitasking [18], we decided to use audio in
CawClock to convey information and use tactile cues in
both NoteLet (fabrics with different textures) and FireFlies
(beads of different sizes) to potentially enable the teachers
to operate the tools without looking at them. Understanding
the context of use and the division of the user’s mental
resources during his or her everyday routine is important to
anticipate whether or not an interaction can shift to the
periphery of attention.
5.2.2 Enabling easy-to-initiate and easy-to-discard
interaction
The observation that interactions may quickly and frequently shift between the center and periphery of attention
entails that interactions may be initiated at any moment,
potentially in the periphery of attention. To support interactions with the peripheral interaction designs developed in
our case studies to be easily initiated, we made sure they
did not require any start-up time. For example, the interactive devices did not need to be turned on before they
could be used. Additionally, this partially motivated our
choice of using audio rather than only visual elements.
Since audio does not need to be looked at to be perceived,
it can be heard whenever it is available. Furthermore, we
found it important that our interactive devices could be ‘at
hand’ whenever the user wished to interact with them.
Since primary school teachers often walk around the
classroom during lessons, we decided to enable our designs
to be attached to the body or clothes of the teachers. Of
course, many other options to make an interactive device
available ‘at hand’ are possible. Interesting directions to
achieve this could be wearable computing [43], mobile
computing [44], whole body interaction [45], gesture
interaction [46] or tangible gesture interaction [47].
Apart from the idea that interactions should be available
to be initiated any time, we have also seen in Fig. 5c that
interactions may easily be discarded, even when an interaction is unfinished. In this example, a child asked the
teacher a question while the teacher was interacting with
FireFlies. As a result, the teacher temporarily discarded the
interaction with the teacher-tool to pick it up later.
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Although we did not directly anticipate this with our
designs, they seemed to function relatively well in such
situations; no settings were lost and no errors occurred
when the interaction was discarded. We believe that the
possibility of users discarding an interaction in the middle
of it may be a relevant consideration for peripheral interaction design.
5.2.3 Evaluating in context
The context and routine in which an interactive system is
used highly influence how the user interacts with it, what
its value is to the user and whether it can shift between the
center and periphery of attention. Given that the aim of
peripheral interaction is to embed interactive systems in
everyday routines, it seems evident such interactive systems are best evaluated by deploying them in the real
context of use for a longer period of time. In this way, users
can interact with them in an everyday life setting, and the
potential integration of the system into the routine can be
experienced by the user and evaluated by the researcher.
Although the traditional approach to evaluate how users
interact with technology is to observe them in a controlled,
laboratory-style setting, the approach to deploy designs ‘in
the wild’ seems to be increasingly suggested in literature
on interaction design in general [48]. A longitudinal
approach to user evaluations is recommended specifically
for systems that present information in people’s periphery
of attention [22, 49].
In our case studies, we also deployed our designs in the
real context of use, and this approach indeed revealed
insights that would likely not have been gained otherwise.
This for example became clear in the deployment of NoteLet, an interactive bracelet with which teachers could take
pictures that could later viewed to remember and take notes
of the children’s behaviors. As part of the iterative design
process, we discussed an early concept of NoteLet with
three teachers, all of whom imagined that they could
valuably apply it in their classroom. We deployed a prototype version of NoteLet in one of these teachers’ classrooms, and, after using it, the participating teacher realized
that although it seemed valuable at first, the activity of
looking at the pictures after school hours took too much
time and would therefore not fit in her routine as well as
she had imagined. With FireFlies, we had an opposite
experience. Of the nine teachers with whom we discussed
an early concept of the design, four were hesitant about its
potential usefulness. They had difficulty imagining for
which purpose they would use it, and therefore, they were
unsure if it would be valuable to them. Three of these four
teachers eventually used FireFlies in their classroom, and
all three found a relevant purpose for it and were able to
integrate it in their routine. Though we realize that there is
Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
much in between discussing a conceptual version of a
design with users and having them use it in their daily
routines, these examples do show that crucial parts of the
user experience may only become evident after it is
deployed in the real context of use for a period of time.
Although everyday interactive systems seem best evaluated in long-term studies, this approach also has clear
limitations. Such studies require tremendous time and
effort, even if only a small number of participants is
involved. While studies in which participants use a new
design for a few hours or less seem unsuitable to evaluate
the integration of the design in the user’s routine, such
studies can of course be suitable to reach other evaluation
goals. For example, the usability of the design or the extent
to which users can understand the mapping between visual
and sound can also be concluded from studies with shorter
duration. However, the main goal of peripheral interaction,
embedding interactive systems in the everyday context and
routine, can only be assessed in a long-term study. The
required duration of such studies seems to depend on many
aspects, such as the number of times interaction takes
place, the difficulty of an interaction and whether or not
other activities need to be unlearned. In the six-week
deployment of FireFlies, we observed peripheral interactions in the fifth and sixth week of the evaluation. However, we did not find a clear longitudinal effect. For
example, we did not find an evidently increasing number of
peripheral interactions over the 6 weeks. Longer deployment would likely have been required to observe such
effects. Nevertheless, our observation that some interactions with FireFlies can take place in the periphery of
attention is a promising support for the feasibility of
peripheral interaction. We believe that these results would
not have been gained without deploying (prototypes of)
interactive systems in the context of use for a longer period
of time.
5.3 Supporting personal differences
A second main characteristic of peripheral interaction, as
discussed before, is its highly personal nature. Through our
case studies, we have aimed to support the use of our
designs in a personally relevant way, though iterations
were clearly required to achieve this. This gave us insight
in possible ways to support habituation and in potential
ways to support personal preferences of various users.
5.3.1 Supporting habituation
Before an interactive system can blend into an everyday
routine, the user needs to get used to interacting with it: the
interaction can then become habituated. Our design CawClock addressed this by involving multiple levels of detail
251
in one information display. CawClock combined the visual
display of an analog clock on which colored time frames
could be shown, with a soundscape that represented which
time frame was ongoing and approximately for how long.
The teacher who used CawClock for 2 weeks indicated that
she could easily hear which time frame was ongoing (each
color was represented by a specific animal sound) but that
she needed to look at the clock to find out how much time
was left. Although the soundscape also indicated this
through the number of animal sounds included, she had not
been able to recognize this detail in the two-week period.
Although this may very well be due to lack of sophistication in the sound design, it may also show that 2 weeks was
not enough to learn to recognize the subtle differences in
the soundscape. If she would have used it longer than
2 weeks, she may eventually have learned to recognize
these details in the soundscape.
Two things seem interesting in the above example. First,
the combination of two modalities that display the same
information could potentially have supported the learning
process. Although the details of how much time was left
could initially not be heard, the fact that it could easily be
seen on the visual display may have helped the teacher in
realizing how this information was presented by the audio.
Second, the different levels of detail in the audio (the
overall information of ‘a time frame is ongoing’ versus the
detailed information of ‘the blue time frame is almost
finished’) enabled the user to quickly apply the design
without much learning time, while after a learning period,
she may have been able to use the full potential of the
audio. When such different levels of detail are implemented in a design, it is likely that people initially only use
the overall information. However, while using the overall
layer of information, the user may gradually start understanding the details as well and, little by little, learn to
(automatically) recognize them. Although the details are
this way not directly used, the process of learning how to
use them also barely requires conscious effort. It therefore
seems that a design with different levels of detail may
support the process of learning how to interact with it,
enabling its habituation.
5.3.2 Supporting personal preferences
Interactive systems, which facilitate peripheral interaction,
should support different individual’s preferences. There
may be many ways in which this challenge could be
addressed. In our design of FireFlies, we aimed to address
it by making FireFlies an open-ended design, which meant
that the purpose for which teachers could use FireFlies was
not predefined but could be chosen by the teacher. As a
result, we indeed found that different teachers used FireFlies for different purposes, while most of them found it a
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valuable addition to their everyday routine. This seems to
indicate a success of our open-ended approach. However,
we also recognized that some teachers had difficulty integrating specific elements of the design into their everyday
routine, such as the alphabetic order of the names on the
teacher-tool as well as the use of audio in general, while
this was easier for other teachers. Apart from an openended purpose, the design may therefore also have benefitted from an open-ended mapping between input and
output. This may be a relevant to consider as a means to
facilitate peripheral interaction with everyday interactive
systems.
A related issue, which applies mainly to information
displays, is that the presented information may not be
relevant for everyone who can perceive it. We noticed this
with our FireFlies design, which played a soundscape that
revealed which colors were currently in use. When a color
was used to communicate information to the entire class,
e.g., instructing the children to work in silence, the
soundscape revealed information that could be useful for
everyone. However, FireFlies was often used to send
messages to individual children, e.g., to give a compliment.
In these cases, only one or a few light-objects had a color
and the others were off. The audio was at such moments
mainly relevant for the child who received the compliment
and not for the other children. Since the audio was played
from speakers in the back of the classroom, however, all
children perceived it and the audio sometimes distracted
those for whom the information was not relevant. To prevent such problems, Eggen and Mensvoort [50] suggested
the concept of information decoration, which aims to
present information in a decorative way. This way, people
to whom the information is not relevant, may still benefit of
the design as it also serves a decorative function, such as by
providing pleasant or relaxing background sounds. This
direction seems particularly suitable in situations in which
multiple potential users are involved, such as in public
spaces.
6 Conclusions
This paper explores interactions with technology that
reside in the periphery of attention, but shift to the center of
attention when relevant or desired. By discussing the theory underlying peripheral interaction as well as three case
studies on peripheral interaction design and evaluation, we
presented two main characteristics of peripheral interaction. Following from these characteristics, we presented
considerations that can support researchers and practitioners, who work on the development of everyday interactive
systems, in considering their designs being used in the
user’s periphery of attention.
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Pers Ubiquit Comput (2015) 19:239–254
In our case studies, we realized that everyday interactive
systems very frequently shift between center and periphery
of attention, even in-between different stages of interaction. Such shifts therefore make up an important characteristic of peripheral interaction and highly depend on the
contexts and routines in which the interaction takes place.
Our discussion furthermore made clear that, as a second
key characteristic, peripheral interaction has a highly personal nature. Peripheral interaction seems to require both
learning and unlearning: while it takes time to get used to
new interactions as part of existing routines, users often
need to unlearn existing habits at the same time. Additionally, our case studies made us realize that individual
person’s mind-sets influence the extent to which a design
can shift to the periphery of attention.
These two main characteristics of peripheral interaction
reveal that, in the development of such interactive systems,
it is important to consider how to support shifts between
center and periphery and how to support personal differences. Generalizing from the ways we approached these
challenges in our case studies, we concluded peripheral
interaction can benefit from taking into account context and
routine, enabling easy-to-initiate and easy-to-discard
interaction, evaluating in context, and supporting both
habituation and personal preferences.
We believe that the characteristics and considerations
presented can support researchers and practitioners in the
area of interaction design to realize that their design may
be used in their users’ periphery of attention. When such
peripheral interactions are anticipated and facilitated,
everyday interactive systems can fluently be embedded in
people’s daily routines.
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