Evaluating Peripheral Displays

Although peripheral displays have been a domain of inquiry for over a decade now, evaluation criteria and techniques for this area are still being created. Peripheral display evaluation is an acknowledged challenge in a field setting. This chapter first describes models and methods that have been tailored specifically to evaluating peripheral displays (measuring how well they achieve their goals). Then, we present evaluation criteria used in past evaluations of peripheral displays, ranging from issues such as learnability to distraction. After explaining how these criteria have been assessed in the past, we present a case study evaluation of two e-mail peripheral displays that demonstrates the pros and cons of various evaluation techniques.