Ambient Phone

Design 1 - Solar System

This prototype uses the solar system to visualize the information. The planets are all constantly moving around the sun (the center). In the initial prototype each planet represents one communication partner. The size and velocity of the planet reflect the communication events. The bigger the planets the more messages exchanged, and the faster the planet moves, the more call conversations have taken place with the person. In the set-up screen of this prototype contacts can be assigned to planets. E.g. one can assign her best friend Max to the Earth and her grandma to Mars. The communication behavior with these people is then reflected by these components in the visualization. This visualization offers further parameters that could be used to map information, e.g. activity of background stars, rotation of planets, or appearance of comets. During the discussion of the result one idea was to add a comet automatically to the visualization if there is a lot of communication a new person. The user would then be able to look up in the set-up screen who this is, and potentially map this new contact to a planet.

Design 2 - Aquarium

The aquarium prototype reuses a common screen saver scheme. In this case each chosen communication partner is represented by a fish, see Figure 2. The fish are animated. In this prototype the size of the fish reflects the money the user spent on communication with this person; the bigger the fish the more money was spent in communication with this person. The speed of the fish is related to the time since the last call. If the fish is very slow there was no communication for a long time. The direction on the fish visualizes the direction of the initiation of calls. If the fish swims from left to right you call more often that you are called by this person.

Options available to convey further parameters are bubbles from the mouth of a fish, the animation of the mouth of the fish, and plants in the water.

Design 3 - Bubbles

Here, an abstract representation is used. Each circle (distinguished by color) is a person and the size and speed of the circle represents communication meta-information with this person. Likewise each circle can be used to represent one call. The color links it to a person and the size shows to the duration of the call.

Design 4 - Heartbeat

Another abstract representation using differently couloured lines. These could either be used to give an indication of the progression of calls made or visualize several parameters at the same time.

Design 5a / 5b - Flowers

The flowers in this version are similar to the fish in the aquarium. In the basic version (top) only the size of the flowers are used representing the communication activity over the last weeks with the associated person. In the setup a contact can be assigned to each flower.

In the extended version (bottom) the altitude of the sun, the number of leaves, the size of the flowers and the speed and magnitude of their movement can all be used as parameters.

Design 6 - City Map

This design switches between two different views on the statistical data. First, coloured pie charts convey some information like the number of calls to a specific contact (matched by colour). Second, a street map is shown with a small car travelling around. This is used to show locations where the user spent much of her / his time. Whenever such a location is visible or the car approaches such a location, the building is highlighted. This of course breaches the concept of privacy if real maps are used. Abstract or artificial maps could be used to overcome this issue.