Closer to You: Reviewing the Application, Design, and Evaluation of Ambient Displays

This paper presents results from a recent literature review on ambient displays. While the main background of the authors is education and technology-enhanced learning, the review starts more generic with a broader view on ambient displays and their interactional, instructional, and informational characteristics. Beside depicting characteristics and classifying prototypical designs, the review also sheds light on the actual use of the covered ambient displays, their application context and addressed domains as well as the type of studies conducted, including the used methodologies and evaluation approaches to measure their effectiveness and impact. The review concludes with a discussion of the presented results emphasising the derived implications for the user when interacting with ambient displays.