Daisies on Mars: Disseminating scientific information by use of developmental animation

The sciences often find it difficult to present complex ideas to audiences in ways that are informative and interesting. This is problematic, when the public needs to enter into a debate about new ideas, during conferences when vast amounts of information on diverse subjects are presented in a very short time, and in lectures when experts present fundamental principles to novices. Given our relatively short attention spans, boredom thresholds and limited capacity to assimilate new information, it is essential that the medium is an effective conveyor of the message, and in itself helps the receiver to remain alert and focused whilst also presenting information in a clear and unambiguous manner. The development of a new area of research, cogent computing, provided an opportunity to produce an effective, animation-based information communication tool, in the form of an application scenario, to be used for communicating to students, wider audiences and the design and development team itself, technical aspects of pervasive computing. © 2006 IEEE.