Understanding Dynamic Design Elements for Information Representation of Ambient Media

As newly emerging dynamic elements in the time based design area, such as interaction design, dynamic design elements are evolving under new principles. It is different from the static design elements – color, form or material – of conventional design fields like visual design or product design. Ambient Media (or ambient display, Wisneski et al 1998) represent information through subtle changes of everyday objects and environments. Representing information of ambient media has temporal and dynamic characteristics, utilizing dynamic design elements. We explored and refined the type of the dynamic design elements, analyzing dynamic qualities of ambient media cases as well as various time based design fields. As a result, 4 dynamic elements – tempo, direction, rhythm and volume – were proposed. Besides, analyzing representation qualities of ambient media, we found diverse representation methods according to the type of information and centralizing types of peripheral information. Understanding the dynamic design elements is expected to help the systematical approach in information representation at users’