Twila – an ambient display to encourage strategic social media engagement
ABSTRACT
Twila (twitter lamp) represents a calm technology artifact that empowers the user to strategically engage with social media thereby reducing overall screen time and minimizing risk of social media addictive behaviors. Twila is programmed to alert the user of Twitter chatter using a preset hashtag search term. The efficacy of Twila is based on its ability to meet the criteria of calm technology as well as its impact on social media behaviors (overall screen time, social media engagement, emotional responses). The Twila prototype is designed around hardware (Raspberry Pi Zero) that prioritizes affordability and size to allow for end-user customization (aesthetic preferences) as well as K-12 and higher education interdisciplinary educational opportunities.
KEYWORDS
Ambient displays, calm technology, social media, informative art, human behavior
1 Introduction
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Herbert Simon (1971)
The poignant musings of Herbert Simon directly relate to both the challenge and potential solution put forth in this project. The quantity and pace of information shared on social media can be defined as the “wealth of information,” and the “poverty of attention” is represented by the tasks that should be in the foreground for a user. How can a user more strategically interact with social media while maintaining focus on a primary task? Can computation be used to solve a problem without introducing yet another screen?
While the concept of what constitutes social media overuse may be subjective, technology addictions are recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. “Internet addiction is the state where use of the Internet becomes compulsive; the user starts to develop a dependence on the Internet for their psychological well-being and said user experiences unpleasant feelings when deprived of the Internet. This creates a state where the user feels that they need the Internet to function in their daily lives” [1].
Individuals are using every Internet connected device they possess to check for status updates, friend requests, news feed updates, etc. From recent research on social media addiction the user is performing these actions in pursuit of diversion, self-presentation, and relationship building [1].
The addictive use of social media is a specific form of technology addictions. It manifests in addiction-like symptoms, including salience (preoccupation with the behavior), mood modification (performing the behavior to relieve or reduce aversive emotional states), tolerance (increasing engagement in the behavior over time to attain the initial mood modifying effects), withdrawal (experiencing psychological and physical discomfort when the behavior is reduced or prohibited), conflict (putting off or neglecting social, recreational, work, educational, household, and/or other activities as well as one's own and others' needs because of the behavior), and relapse (unsuccessfully attempting to cut down or control the behavior) [2,3].
A 2014 meta-analysis determined that approximately 6% of the world's population have at least a base level of Internet addiction [4]. Given the estimate of 3.5 billion Internet users in 2016 [5], this equates to over 210 million individuals potentially affected.
On average, 27% of time spent using the Internet is for social media interaction, more than for other forms of entertainment, email, and news combined [6].
There are endless memes and quips about an unfathomable amount of time spent on social media, but serious attention to the dangers and consequences of pathological use of social media is rarely in the limelight. As such, there is an overwhelming risk for users to experience negative consequences (stress, discontent, poor life satisfaction) as a result of Internet and social media addiction. Even if users fail to meet the criteria of genuine addiction, many users anecdotally report spending too much time on social media. Using an ambient display to alert a user of when to engage on social media may reduce unnecessary time spent on social media and, in turn, improve user experiences as they relate to stress, disconnectedness, distractions, etc.
Ambient displays are a form of technology that are intended to co- exist in a user’s environment and while remaining in the “background” until there is information to impart upon the user. Could an ambient display, a form of calm technology, be used to impact human behavior (i.e., reduce aimless social media perusing in favor of more strategic engagement)?
Twila is a “twitter lamp” that intends to minimize social media overuse by notifying a user when an important event (hashtag usage) occurs on Twitter. If Twila is to be considered a calm technology artifact, it needs to fit the most common criteria for calm technology (the artifact is visually pleasing without being distracting, encodes some amount of information, and requires minimal attention to impart information).
If Twila is successful, it will meet the criteria of calm technology while also having a measurable impact on human behavior. In this case, the desired output would be either to significantly reduce overall screen time (i.e., time spent mindlessly perusing Twitter) or to improve strategic use of social media and improve mood (i.e., feeling of accomplishment due to impactful use of time on social media).
Finally, Twila presents a unique opportunity to create interdisciplinary curriculum that can seamlessly track between topics including computer programming, design thinking, biology, psychology, technology, ethics, and art. Twila was purposefully designed around affordable hardware that comes in a form factor that easily lends itself to endless enclosure possibilities. This decision was made both to address overall affordability as well as user customization.
2 Related Work
Twila borrows from the fields of ambient displays, informative art, and calm technology as it represents a work of art that also serves as an information display.
Ambient displays represent a tool that creates an interface between people and digital information thereby blurring the boundaries between physical and digital spaces. Ambient Displays present information “within a space through subtle changes in light, sound, and movement, which can be processed in the background of awareness” [7].
Ambient displays move information from limited screen real estate to the physical environment. The displays frequently employ subtle changes in color, light, temperature, form, movement or sound. A canonical example of an ambient display is the LiveWire from Natalie Jeremijenko which imparted information about network traffic in a beautifully simplistic and compelling artifact [8].
Ambient displays are intended to co-exist in a user’s environment and can benefit from the “cocktail party effect” which is the ability of a person to selectively move their attention around a busy environment (as described by Colin Cherry in 1953). The display should remain in the “background” until there is information to impart upon the user. To ensure that an ambient display is successful in its quiet and active modes, it should be designed with the user’s environment and foreground tasks in mind. If the user is in a noisy environment, an ambient display that employs auditory notifications may fail. In contrast, a user whose primary task is highly visual may fail to register a subtle visual cue from an ambient display. The ambient display must remain in the periphery while simultaneously being able to alert the user with an environmentally appropriate signal.
Calm technology envelops both informative art and ambient displays. Its artifacts are aesthetic in nature and do not forcibly claim attention. Calm technology easily passes between the center and the periphery of the user’s attention. As Weiser & Brown [8] note, “we must learn to design for the periphery so that we can most fully command technology without being dominated by it.” They provide perhaps the most compelling and impactful description of calm technology: that which informs but doesn't demand our focus or attention.
Calm technology is often separated into two categories. There are innovative artifacts that provide information in an aesthetic form like Natalie Jeremijenko’s LiveWire and there are simplistic elements like the office window which is aesthetic and provides information about the user environment while requiring minimal attention. These artifacts are also known as ambient displays, peripheral displays, and informative art. The artifacts should be unobtrusive and able to provide information to the user with minimal effort.
If Twila is to be considered a calm technology artifact, it needs to satisfy the most common criteria for calm technology: aesthetics (the artifact is visually pleasing without being distracting), information (the artifact encodes some amount of information), and attention (the artifact requires minimal attention to impart information). One could argue that an artifact that fails to meet all criteria would no longer be “calm.”
Aesthetics are difficult to evaluate due to the high degree of subjectivity. However, Twila was not designed to be a product per se. The overall idea of Twila would be to empower the user to create an enclosure of their aesthetic preference. Users could be provided with simple aesthetic guidelines to follow to ensure that the resulting final product accomplishes the goals of calm technology. The artifact does not need to impart a specific amount of information (a single unit of information is sufficient depending on the application), but it should be easy to measure whether or not the user can interpret the information provided by the artifact. Finally, the artifact needs to impart the information without requiring undue attention from the user. This emphasis on designing for minimal attention is a critical feature that separates calm technology from standard visualizations. So, how do you measure the amount of attention that an artifact requires from a user?
Mankoff et al. (2003) established a technique for evaluating the usability and effectiveness of ambient displays. At the time, there was a shortage of work focused on evaluation due, in part, to the difficulty and cost associated with ambient display evaluation [9]. They adapted heuristic evaluation (a low-cost option) for use with ambient displays. Mankoff et al. compared the performance of Nielsen’s heuristics [10] with their heuristics on two ambient displays. The results showed that evaluators using their (Mankoff et al.) heuristics found more, severe problems than evaluators using only Nielsen’s heuristics. Figure 1 shows the Mankoff et al. heuristics including the Nielsen heuristics (marked with ‘*’) as described by Consolvo and Towle [11].
In its prototype form, Twila fulfills the following heuristics: sufficient information design, consistent and intuitive mapping, aesthetic and pleasing design, useful and relevant information, and “peripherality” of display. Levin (2008) argues that the three categories that correspond to calm technology are “aesthetic and pleasing design”, “sufficient information design”, and “‘peripherality’ of display” [12].
While the aesthetics and pleasing design are difficult to measure as there is no universal design that would appeal to every user. As the world moves increasingly towards a customized culture, there is flexibility in final form. It may be argued that the focus of evaluation should be placed on the “sufficient information design” and “peripherality of display” to ensure that the artifact provides just enough information while maintaining its status as an unobtrusive object that does not require too much attention from the user.
Twila fulfills the “consistent and intuitive mapping” defined by Mankoff et al. [9] as being an ambient display that adds minimal cognitive load. Cognitive load may be higher when users must remember what states or changes in the display mean. The display should be intuitive. In its prototype form, Twila blinks in response to activity of a Twitter hashtag.
The user must pay attention to only whether Twila is blinking. In this regard, the optimal use of Twila would be a hashtag that is not trending. If used with a trending or popular hashtag, the artifact would constantly blink and lose its efficacy.
Figure 1: The list of Mankoff et al. heuristics including the Nielsen heuristics (makred with ‘*’) as discussed in Consolvo and Towle (2005).
One of the heuristics, visibility of state, argues that the ambient display should make the states of the system noticeable. The transition from one state to another should be easily perceptible to the user. The Twila prototype does not currently include a status indicator. The user would not know whether the artifact is
Sufficient information design
The display should be designed to convey “just enough” information. Too much information cramps the display, and too little makes the display less useful
Consistent and intuitive mapping
Ambient displays should add minimal cognitive load. Cognitive load may be higher when users must remember what states or changes in the display mean. The display should be intuitive
Match between system and real world*
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order
Visibility of state
An ambient display should make the states of the system noticeable. The transition from one state to another should be easily perceptible
Aesthetic and pleasing design
The display should be pleasing when it is placed in the intended setting
Useful and relevant information
The information should be useful and relevant to the users in the intended setting
Visibility of system status *
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time
User control and freedom *
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo
Easy transition to more in-depth information
If the display offers multi-leveled information, the display should make it easy and quick for users to find out more detailed information
“Peripherality” of display
The display should be unobtrusive and remain so unless it requires the user’s attention. User should be able to easily monitor the display
Error prevention *
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place
Flexibility and efficiency of use *
Accelerators—unseen by the novice user—may often speed up the interaction for the expert user to such an extent that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions
INFO 6301, May, 2020, Boulder, CO USA
L. Diamond
functioning without accessing the terminal or code window. This heuristic could be easily satisfied by adding a single LED to serve as an indicator (e.g., solid hue #1 denotes functioning, blinking hue #2 denotes error). This feature should be added prior to formal user-testing.
Heuristic evaluation is an important layer of determining whether Twila meets the criteria of calm technology and ambient displays. The efficacy of Twila could also be evaluated by placing it in a real environment to gather users’ reactions to the. The long-term studies allow researchers to determine how the artifact is actually used in the environment and whether it successfully accomplishes its goals.
Consolvo and Towle (2005) introduced CareNet as a calm artifact designed to inform care givers of medication that an elderly person needs. The information was embedded as symbols in a picture frame containing the elderly person’s photograph. The researchers confirmed that Mankoff’s heuristic was successful in revealing usability issues related to CareNet. In addition, the researchers also performed a long-term student (three weeks) by placing CareNet in an actual home. The user interviews unveiled additional usability issues that had not been detected by Mankoff’s heuristic [11].
Another example is the Gustbowl as introduced and evaluated by Van der Hoog et al. (2004). While the Gustbowl was designed to provide basic communication between a mother and son, the researchers found that users expanded the uses of Gustbowl beyond its designed purpose [13]. While the intent for Gustbowl was simply to provide subtle cues that a person arrived in their house, one of the user pairs started collecting small trinkets in their bowls to share with each other. According to the mother and son, this type of communication made them feel much closer to each other. These types of expansions of use cannot be easily discovered by limiting evaluation of an object or artifact to simply meeting or failing to meet a checklist of criteria like the heuristic.
In another example, Jafarinaimi et al. (2005) developed Breakaway, a small figurine which represents a sitting human shape and is placed on the user’s desk to change human behavior [14]. The longer the user works at their desk, the more the figurine slouches thereby informing the user to take a break. In a long-term study, the researchers found that the user’s behavior changed for the better (more frequent breaks), which supported a healthier lifestyle.
Levin (2008) provides the following critical summary of the importance of long-term evaluation as they can reveal a variety of problems and uses of calm technology. Long-term evaluations can determine actual uses of a calm artifact (whether real users use the artifact, and whether calm artifacts perform as intended). Hence, long-term evaluation is an essential part of designing practical calm artifacts. However, long-term studies have flaws. First, they are long and, ipso facto, expensive. Researchers must be confident that
Figure 2: Twila’s design blends into the user’s aesthetic while providing a service – strategically alerting the user of important Twitter chatter (top). The Twila prototype enclosure includes frosted acrylic to diffuse the LEDs, Jatoba (Brazilian Cherry) and Maple woods (middle). The Twila hardware includes a Raspberry Pi Zero W and Pimoroni Unicorn pHAT (bottom).
the calm artifact is successful before they are willing to perform a long-term study. Long-term evaluations generally do not answer questions about an artifact’s attention requirement or comprehension. They simply prove that the user likes, or uses, the artifact. They may not help in future design of new artifacts or in addressing the question of attentional demand [11].
Twila – an ambient display to encourage strategic social media engagement
INFO 6301’20, May, 2020, Boulder, CO USA
An interesting evaluation for the efficacy of Twila as an artifact of calm technology would be to employ a dual task experiment to determine if a user continues to perform the first task (ignoring Twila) or pays attention to Twila at the sacrifice of performance on the initial task. If Twila alerts a user, do they interrupt the initial task to immediately engage with social media? Or, do they acknowledge the alert and address the social media “task” at a more opportune time? The dual task experiment would provide a more rigorous evaluation to effectively measure how a user interacts with Twila and to help determine whether Twila performs as the unobtrusive informative artifact it is intended to be.
Finally, Twila’s success should be evaluated by user behavioral change. Do users spend less overall time on social media? Do users report feeling more strategic about their use of social media (less time aimlessly perusing)? Are there changes in user awareness of screen time usage (particularly social media) as a result of the display? A long-term user study would allow researchers to determine whether the efficacy of Twila (or another artifact) wanes over time. Do users stop paying attention to Twila? If so, does their screen time usage climb to previous amounts? These evaluations will give users an opportunity to affect the design of future Twila prototypes.
4 Findings
The primary goal of the project was to build a functioning prototype. Future efforts will focus on the user testing and evaluation of Twila. Additional information can be found in the following section.
5 “Conclusions” & Future Work
Twila solves the challenge of notifying a user about a social media event without introducing another screen or inadvertently causing the user to needlessly check their phone for notifications. The increased access to affordable computational power can lead to overly complex solutions. There remains an opportunity for solving important challenges with aesthetically pleasing, simple solutions. Twila listens to Twitter and blinks LEDs in response to a preset hashtag of the user’s choosing thereby accomplishing the overarching goal of peripherally signaling the user with a more strategic notification. The user can set Twila’s code to listen for any topic or community that has an affiliated hashtag.
The initial parameters for Twila were based on the idea of rallying people in support of or in opposition to specific local legislation. A common use of Twitter hashtags in the legislative realm is the binary YES or NO to a specific bill (e.g., the most recent immunization-related bill in Colorado was addressed with #YESonSB163 or #NOonSB163). If a user were interested in being alerted with activists opposed to a piece of legislation were actively discussing the bill on Twitter and/or communicating with legislators, Twila could be set to that hashtag. In this form, Twila
acts as a “bat signal” of sorts that can be used to rally legislative supporters to engage around the bill on social media.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Colorado General Assembly was placed on hold. As such, Twila was unable to be user-tested with its original intent. However, the pandemic introduced a variety of timely hashtags that could be used to test Twila’s functionality and efficacy. The #COVID19 hashtag was a perfect test case for functionality as it ensured a constant state of notifications. It is important to note that while a constant flow of alerts is ideal for testing functionality, the consistent notifications would negate most of the criteria for a calm technology artifact.
Once Twila was operating as intended, it could be used to visually represent the popularity of more nuanced sociopolitical hashtags such as #FakeNews, #FireFauci, #FilmYourHospital, and #CoronaHoax. As scientific misinformation is its own form of a pandemic, using Twila to alert a user about misinformation campaigns would be a potential application. If the code were setup to capture the tweets for further analysis, researchers could explore geographic clustering as well as overall sentiment analysis.
To solve the challenge of using calm technology to alert the user of Twitter hashtag alerts, the initial Twila prototype takes advantage of the addressable LEDs on the Pimoroni unicorn pHAT board. Users can adjust brightness, hue, as well as the location and numbers of illuminated LEDs. The prototype enclosure was designed for the author’s whimsical mid-century modern aesthetic. The purple flashing light glows through a hand-crafted wooden box with a polka dot design. While the prototype is designed to simply flash all at once as a notification, the addressable LEDs allow for the enclosure to be designed to display different hues in different quadrants (certain colors in discrete regions to signify particular events or a range of LEDs that could provide visual information of a scale) as seen in Figure 3. For multiple notification designs, the color presets for light-based displays could be programmed to avoid hues associated with color-blindness.
While the Twila prototype utilized light as a notification, the Raspberry pi hardware ecosystem creates the potential to solve a variety of accessibility issues. Twila could be designed to use sound or vibration as an alert mechanism.
A limitation of Twila is that it requires the user to be present to impart information. While the obvious solution may be to build an app that could notify the user, that partially negates the point of minimizing screen time. An alternative solution would be to have an indicator light that could illuminate when activity is detected within the past hour. An example would be if a user attends a meeting. When the user returns to their desk, the indicator light would alert them that there was action while they were away. Mobile notification distractions aside, a corresponding app would provide the user the ability to adjust features and detect Twila status without accessing the underlying code (e.g., (1) ability to change
INFO 6301, May, 2020, Boulder, CO USA
L. Diamond
Figure 3: Twila display options based on user preference for information load (whimsical – upper left, dual information – upper right, scale – lower left, text-based – lower right). The whimsical and text-based options provide a binary level of information while the dual information and scale can provide additional layers or nuance.
search terms, (2) adjust notification features (hue, brightness level), and (3) detect system status or errors).
Beyond its use as a personal artifact, Twila presents an opportunity for interdisciplinary education across programming, design thinking, and accessibility. The Raspberry Pi Zero W was selected for both the cost efficacy as well as its expansive hardware ecosystem. The low cost of materials opens this project up for K- 12 and higher education project-based curriculum. The prototype was designed with wood due to user preference and access to materials and tooling. However, the relatively small form factor of the hardware allows for endless enclosure possibilities. Students could explore a variety of enclosure options including reusable plastic containers, picture frames, laser cut and 3D-printed materials, woodworking, pottery, and toy-hacking. If the unit price of the Unicorn pHAT is outside of the budgetary scope for an organization or, if the goal would be to include circuit design, the project could be adapted to work with breadboards, sensors, LEDs, etc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Dean Diamond for woodworking assistance in building the enclosure for the Twila prototype, Steve Voida and Jeff Branson for assistance with troubleshooting code, and the Spring 2020 INFO 6301 student cohort for their support, tech tutorials, and camaraderie.
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