Public Displays

Once we had an outline of what we wanted to do for our new direction i started to look into different types of public displays. How they work, what is effective and not affective to try and gain a better understanding of what we will need to do if we were to implement one of our own.

One of the biggest issues with modern cities is that people don't seem to interact anymore. whenever people are walking around a city or using public transport it always seems to be a matter of keeping your head down and yourself to yourself. Even eye contact is now a taboo, that awkward look away people do when you make contact with them in the street. One of the main causes of this seems to be the explosion of smart phones and other such devices that fit in your pocket and give you a good excuse to not have to even look at someone you might meet in the street. Despite the fact that this causes people in cities to become detached from one another the digital age is here to stay so the issue is not going to go away any time soon. People don't want to interact with each other so how do we get people to interact with a display, and even further interact with a display with someone else.

I looked at interactive displays that people had done before:


1)


This billboard appeared in Dublin for Honda, where customers could “start” the car by texting to an SMS shortcode and could also download information by Bluetooth. The campaign was created by GT Media and JC Decaux using technology provided by Púca.


2)



Nike demonstrates that even in philanthropy, it stands for athletes. In an interactive billboard (by BBDO) publicizing a charity 10k run in Argentina, the athletics powerhouse invites passers-by to have a run on a treadmill that logs a communal kilometer count. For each kilometer run, Nike donates a set amount to UNICEF, urging that Training for the 10k doesn't only help you. For each kilometer run, you will be helping UNICEF.


3)


As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors will lock on to the person closest to the wall, who will then be able to control a projected slider button at the bottom of the wall. As the selected pedestrian continues walking and moves the slider along, the wall will start displaying colorful animation and playing music, effects that will grow or recede at the pace that the person advances or retreats.

The main thing that stands out from looking at different types of public display is that they need to 1, draw the attention of people from a distance, having something that people wont notice will never work as they will have no insentive to you it if they barely notice it. The second thing is that they all use different technologies and have different functions to that of the standerd devices that people have now grown acousmted to, the most successful types f displays now show people somthng that have not seen before. To make the display effective we should have the users know before they use tit that this is going to be a unique and new experience.


During my research a came across some good information about how to properly get people in approach and interact with a display. The information provide will be very useful for future development.


Public displays need to grab the attention of passers-by, motivate passers-by to interact with them, and deal with the issues of interaction in the public. In contrast to many other computing technologies, interaction with public displays does not start with the interaction itself. Instead,
the audience is initially simply passing by, without any intention for interaction.



 People pass through different phases, where a threshold must be overcome for people to pass from one phase to the next. For each pair of phases, a conversion rate can be calculated of how many people are observed to pass from one phase to the next, and different displays can be compared by these rates. In the first phase, people are merely passing by. In the second phase, they are looking at the display, or reacting to it, e.g. by smiling or turning their head. Subtle interaction is only available when users can interact with the display through gestures or movement, and occurs, e.g., when
they wave a hand to see what effect this causes on the display. Direct interaction occurs when users engage with a display in more depth, often positioning themselves in the center in front of it. People may engage with a display multiple times, either when multiple displays are available or if they walk away and come back after a break. Finally, people can take follow-up actions, like taking a photo of themselves or others in front of the display.

The full study can be found here:
http://wdirect.pervasiveadvertising.org/pdf/MM10MuellerReqDesignSpace.pdf