Team Members: John Stasko, Dave McColgin, Todd Miller, Chris Plaue, Zach Pousman,

Downloads Page      Video - Overview of project (74 megabyte MPEG)     Explorations and Experiences with Ambient Information Systems - Pervasive 2007 Workshop     A Taxonomy of Ambient Information Systems: Four Patterns of Design - AVI 2006     Evaluating the InfoCanvas Peripheral Awareness System: A Longitudinal, In Situ Study - GVU Tech Report     Personalized Peripheral Information Awareness through Information Art - UbiComp 2004     Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? An Evaluation of Information Awareness Displays - GI 2004     InfoCanvas: A Highly Personalized, Elegant Awareness Display - CHI 2003 Workshop     Artistically Conveying Information with the InfoCanvas - AVI 2002     The InfoCanvas: Information Conveyance through Personalized, Expressive Art - CHI 2001 Short Paper

The Internet has made information of all types more readily accessible than ever before. Through the net we can get weather forecast, stock quotes, sports scores, and so much more. We call this data “awareness information” because it is important to people, but they typically wish to maintain only a peripheral awareness of it. Unfortunately, as the image on the right shows, current methods for maintaining awareness are too heavy weight, and they can consume a great deal of screen real estate.

Our solution to this problem is to use "Information Art." This strategy creates an eye-appealing addition to a work environment that allows for a multitude of information to monitored with minimal cognitive effort. Essentially, images in a painting represent the state of information of interest to a person. We call our system the "InfoCanvas". It allows people to create highly personalized abstract representations of information. The InfoCanvas is a hybrid ambient display; a dissected, flat-panel LCD screen with a picture frame around it that can be hung like a painting on a wall or set like a picture on a desk.

To learn more about the project, please see the papers above, view a summary video about the InfoCanvas, or browse a Georgia Tech press release about the project.

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS - 0118685.

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