The long-term evaluation of fisherman in a partial-attention environment

Ambient display is a specific subfield of information visualization that only uses partial visual and cognitive attention of its users. Conducting an evaluation while drawing partial user attention is a challenging problem. Many normal information visualization evaluation methods (full attention) may not suit the evaluation of ambient displays. Inspired by concepts in the social and behavioral science, we categorize the evaluation of ambient displays into two methodologies: intrusive and non-intrusive. The major difference between these two approaches is the level of user involvement, as an intrusive evaluation requires a higher user involvement than a non-intrusive evaluation. Based on our long-term (5 months) non-intrusive evaluation of Fisherman presented in [16], this paper provides a detailed discussion of the actual technical and experimental setup of unobtrusively measurement of user gaze over a long period by using a face-tracking camera and IR sensors. In addition, this paper also demonstrates a solution to the ethical problem of using video cameras to collect data in a semi-public place. Finally, a quantitative term of interest measurement with three remarks is also addressed.