A Survey of Pervasive Displays for Information Presentation

Weiser's seminal vision of ubiquitous computing had calm information presentation at its heart and identified an important challenge in providing pervasive yet unobtrusive information display while avoiding problems of information overload. Since this vision was first articulated, a range of approaches have emerged for presenting information on pervasive displays, while digital screens of varying sizes have become an everyday feature of our environments. Such displays provide significant opportunities for presenting information in-situ to support users in a range of activities, and the growing expectation is that there is constant peripheral access to digital information. In this article, the authors review three different pervasive display technologies used for information presentation: traditional 2D display media, urban media facades, and novel display hardware. Their survey identifies five emerging trends that cross all three technologies: an increasing focus on situatedness, a movement toward nonexpert users, a growing demand for accessible interaction, a potential for new applications of data, and difficulty in balancing "calm" computing against presentation of data at an appropriate granularity and complexity. This article is part of a special issue on pervasive displays.