Evaluation of Ambient Light Display for High Information Capacity

Ambient light display presents peripheral information unobtrusively, and it can be context aware and aesthetically enhance specific environment. However, since the abstract characteristic of light, people should attentively keep a good balance between unobtrusiveness and effectiveness, when designing an ambient light display. Especially, in the condition of high information capacity, ambient light display need a mechanism to portray information effectively. In this paper, a framework with an overlay mechanism is evaluated for high information capacity. Based on the framework, two ambient light displays are designed to support the evaluation work. The evaluation questions are related with three aspects including information understanding, transition and encoding, special output channel. From the perception level, interpretation level and experience level, the process of evaluation is implemented. The results indicate that the framework with the overlay mechanism can effectively support varied and specific communicating information. The transitions and information encoding benefit from the proper mapping of states and notification levels in the framework.