Maurer, FrankPratte, Sydney Anne2018-02-202018-02-202018-01Pratte, S. A. (2018). Exploring Notifications with Pepper’s Ghost Illusion (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/5473http://hdl.handle.net/1880/106398Today people are living a fast-paced environment with many tasks trying to grab our attention leading to multitasking and rapid task switching. Notifications and pop-ups is an effective method of grabbing user’s visual attention and helping maintain information awareness. Unfortunately, the current method of notifications has also been considered to be a disruption during tasks. In this work, I explore a different method of gaining user’s visual attention with Pepper’s Ghost optical illusion – called the Acquario display. Through a user study the reaction time and user preference was evaluated to understand the benefits and drawbacks of using Pepper’s Ghost to display pop-up information during a typing task. Results from the pre- and post-study interviews showed that participants liked Pepper’s Ghost Illusion as a notification application. The illusion provided a less invasive means of notifying by appearing overlaid on the screen and its transparent quality. They also reported that the overlay had legibility issues that need addressing. The study showed that there was no statistical significant difference in the participants words per minute or in reaction time. My contributions include a hardware prototype of a desktop display using the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion, a study methodology for evaluation notifications with Pepper’s Ghost and an evaluation of using this technique.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.NotificationsPepper's Ghost IllusionInformation Sciencemaster thesis10.11575/PRISM/5473