Glowworms and fireflies: Ambient light on large interactive surfaces

Abstract

Ambient light is starting to be commercially used to enhance the viewing experience for watching TV. We believe that ambient light can add value in meeting and control rooms that use large vertical interactive surfaces. Therefore, we equipped a large interactive whiteboard with a peripheral ambient light display and explored its utility for different scenarios by conducting two controlled experiments. In the first experiment, we investigated how ambient light can be used for peripheral notifications, and how perception is influenced by the user's position and the type of work they are engaged in. The second experiment investigated the utility of ambient light for off-screen visualization. We condense our findings into several design recommendations that we then applied to application scenarios to show the versatility and usefulness of ambient light for large surfaces.