Decorative, Evocative, and Uncanny: Reactions on Ambient-to-Disruptive Health Notifications via Plant-Mimicking Shape-Changing Interfaces

Ambient Information Systems (AIS) have shown some success when used as a notification towards users’ health-related activities. But in the actual busy lives of users, ambient notifications might be forgotten or even missed, nullifying the original notification. Could a system use multiple levels of noticeability to ensure its message is received, and how could this concept be effectively portrayed? To examine these questions, we took a Research through Design approach and created plant-mimicking Shape-Changing Interface (S-CI) artifacts, then conducted interviews with 10 participants who currently used a reminder system for health-related activities. We report findings on acceptable scenarios to disrupting people for health-related activities, and participants’ reactions to our design choices, including how using naturalistic aesthetics led to interpretations of the uncanny and morose, and which ways system physicality affected imagined uses. We offer design suggestions in health-related notification systems and S-CIs, and discuss future work in ambient-to-disruptive technology.