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Office Window of the Future?—Field-Based Analyses of a New Use of a Large Display
Figure 1. HDTV Camera (circled) mounted on the roof of the university building (left). Brin at work in her office with the plasma display window (right). We installed large plasma displays on the walls of seven inside offices of faculty and staff at a university, and displayed, as the default image, real-time HDTV views of the immediate outside scene. Then, utilizing a field-study methodology, data were collected over a 16-week period to explore the user experience with these large display windows. Through the triangulation of data—652 pages of interview transcripts, journal entries, and responses to email inquiries—results showed that users deeply appreciated many aspects of their experience. Benefits included a reported increase in users’ connection to the wider social community, connection to the natural world, psychological wellbeing, and cognitive functioning. Users also integrated the large display window into their workplace practice. However, users expressed concerns particularly about the impacts on the privacy of people whose images were captured in the public place by the HDTV camera. Discussion focuses on design challenges for future investigations into related uses of large displays.
Read moreA Plasma Display Window?—The Shifting Baseline Problem in a Technologically mediated Natural World
Figure 2. Heart rate recovery from low-level stress. Values are the mean slope of heart rate (in beats per minute per minute (bpm/min)) during the first 60 s of each activity. Negative values indicate decreasing heart rate, and points lower on the graph represent more rapid decreases in heart rate. (The activities are ordered by the overall average slope across all six activities.) Humans will continue to adapt to an increasingly technological world. But are there costs to such adaptations in terms of human well being? Toward broaching this question, we investigated physiological effects of experiencing a HDTV quality real-time view of nature through a plasma display “window.” In an office setting, 90 participants (30 per group) were exposed either to (a) a glass window that afforded a view of a nature scene, (b) a plasma window that afforded a real-time HDTV view of essentially the same scene, or (c) a blank wall. Results showed that in terms of heart rate recovery from low-level stress the glass window was more restorative than a blank wall; in turn, a plasma window was no more restorative than a blank wall. Moreover, when participants spent more time looking at the glass window, their heart rate tended to decrease more rapidly; that was not the case with the plasma window. Discussion focuses on how the purported benefits of viewing nature may be attenuated by a digital medium.
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