Raising Attention

Potential Application Scenarios

Healthcare

Surgeons in emergency rooms work under immense stress levels with enormous responsibility, resulting in an exceptionally high cognitive load. The focus of attention has to be maintained at the patient while performing multi-tasking processes to precisely request and process communication input form the assistants. Especially this communication under high stress levels represents a crucial aspect of successful operations.

Attention aware systems

could be used to create an interactive information system on which the surgeon can unobtrusively and quickly assess information about vital functions of the patient, thus reducing cognitive load and potential errors from communication multi-tasking.
could detect the context of the surgeon's focus of attention and display supportive information like relevant x-ray or computer tomography images.

Automotive

Driving is a highly automated, often monotonous and tiresome process. Yet, motorists bear a high responsibility as attentional errors can cause fatal consequences. Especially drowsiness, distractions or overestimation of one’s own capabilities can lead to accidents with tragic consequences.

Attention aware systems

could detect the attentional state of the driver. In case of distractions, an attention-aware system might redirect the driver's attention to the driving task via subtle or explicit visual, haptic or auditory cues. Detecting typical patterns of drowsiness the system could reommend to takes breaks for refreshment
could interpret the focus of attention to estimate the perception of critical or dangerous information. Thus, an attention-aware system might be able to decide when to provide safety information, thus avoiding exaggerated patronization and increasing the acceptance of the system.

Air Traffic Control

The requirements concerning people working in the field of air traffic control are ability for teamwork, communication skills, medical fitness and most of all emotional stability in highly stressful work environments. The high stress level is caused by the demand for multi-tasking interaction with numerous interfaces, while at the same time performing verbal communication with several pilots. The high cognitive load and responsibility lead to the early retirements of air traffic controllers between the ages of 50 to 56.

Attention aware systems

could observe the attentional state of the system operator to redirect attention to the task in case of distractions or recommend breaks or changes of staff in case of fatigue
could assist the system operator during their work by estimating the focus of attention and perception and give hints on potentially dangerous unobserved situations

Industry 4.0

The production in factories of the future is going to be highly automated and networked. Yet, the concept of 'Industry 4.0' does not address a deserted smart factory, but it creates an increasingly larger number of 'indirect' jobs required to support and control these smart factories. With the production systems becoming more and more complex, the same applies to the control and observation systems, which require highly educated operation.

Attention aware systems

could provide intelligent HCI visualization interfaces to support the complex design, handling and control of the production processes
could increase operation safety and reliability

Finance

Trading at the global stock markets has become a matter of speed. It is not without reason that Willy Viraf calls this phenomenon 'Economics meets aerodynamics'. Algorithms have taken the critical time of trading success down to microseconds, far from any human perception, reasoning, comprehension and influence. The stock market has evolved

Attention aware systems

could observe the abstract processes that escape human perception und comprehension to provide a comprehensible meta-information control level
serve as an early alarm system by analyzing problematic constellations and tendencies

Energy

Smart Grids and home automation services are increasingly used to minimize energy consumption with at the same time increasing comfort. Next to the optimization of the consumption of energy, changing the behavior of people is another important aspect for saving energy costs. This includes raising the awareness of which activities require how much energy.

Attention aware systems

provide a smart energy control by observing activities and focus of attention in people's homes from behavior data
visualize the current energy consumption e.g. on mobile devices to raise the awareness of the abstract energy consumption

Out-of-home Advertisement

Out-of-home advertising is omnipresent in our daily lives and is a high revenue market segment. The most interesting and most difficult question for advertising media as well as agencies and customers is to calculate the effectiveness of campaigns. Still, the effectiveness of OOH advertisement is via statistical methods based on traffic data and size and location of advertisements, which does not represent actual perception data.

Attention aware systems

could replace the statistical estimation of audience perception with actual measurent data
can establish hard pay-per-qualitative-view currency as advertisement billing system
provide effectiveness data as additional value for advertisers
utilize unobtrusive, privacy friendly technology for data collection

Productivity

The existing information overload increases the stress of searching the needle in the always increasing haystack of information. The digitalization of life is accelerating it more and more, interrupting the work flow with notifications, messages and emails. Especially these interruptions cause huge loss of productivity. Studies show that it takes 20 minutes to regain full productivity after an interruption but we are statistically interrupted at work every 3 minutes. Hence, focused work is no longer the norm

Attention aware systems

could be implemented into computer systems to control notifications and interruptions and deliver them according to the current focus of attention and work flow
could provide a continuous work flow, thus improve well-being and productivity

Tourism

With over 20 million tourists per year, tourism is one of the most important branches of Austria’s economy.

Attention aware systems
could provide information systems for tourism application that could

Unobtrusively visualize useful information, adapted to the user’s perception capabilities and preferences to ensure a comfortable transfer of important information
guide and direct user’s attention to interesting and not obvious cultural aspects
Analyze behavior to propose activities

Marketing and Retail

Large-scale promotion campaigns are a popular instrument for creating attention and awareness of products. In most cases, the aim of these campaigns is to engage potential customers actively with a brand or a product to create an emotional connection which anchors the product in the memory.

Attention aware systems

facilitate overcoming the first barrier between customer and product by actively engaging the customer via automatic and high-level user interaction.
automatically initiate a high-level human-computer interaction, suggesting a high level of technology of the product
introduce a new way of interaction and replace the traditional “market crier” with a more subtle innovative way of interaction which is accustomed to the customer

Collective Attention

The investigation of novelty of information and collective attention is taking the analysis of attention distribution from single people to crowds. Especially in poltical and public opinion research, the dynamics of the distribution of information in large scales via different media are of special interest.

Attention aware systems

analyze tweets, reposts, likes quotations, articles or use distributed sensor systems to represent current local or global topics of interest
allows the analysis how information distributes across media and the internet and simulate how fast and how far the attention will spread based on cognitive crowd models

Quality of Life

In cities and conurbations, people are exposed to many invisible and harmful environmental influences like e.g. smog or pollution from CO2, ozone or particulate matters. Being not directly perceivable but causing creeping damage, these influences present a serious danger to health an well-being

Attention aware systems

could create and raise awareness of environmental issues
could use data derived from openData sources like weather monitoring stations to visualize environmental information in everyday situations (->serious gaming)
could help people to change their behavior regarding a healthier lifestyle, e.g. by proposing alternative behaviors that are adapted to the current activity:
“If you’re going to work as usual, why not turn left here and go through the park”

Health and Lifestyle

Aspiring a healthy lifestyle, people have more and more access to detailed nutrition data which is stated on nourishments. However, a well-balanced nourishment is depending a balanced composition of different components and not every diet is appropriate for everyone, but depends on the individual physical health.

Attention aware systems

could help in maintaining a healthy lifestyle by the influencing the eating behavior of people. This could be achieved by raising the awareness for how different products influence your health (->serious gaming>
can calculate an appropriate nutrition schedule adjusted to personal disorders, goals and preferences. The plans can automatically be observed from the general practitioner