Evaluation of a programming toolkit for interactive public display applications

Interaction is repeatedly pointed out as a key enabling element towards more engaging and valuable public displays. Still, most digital public displays today do not support any interactive features. We argue that this is mainly due to the lack of efficient and clear abstractions that developers can use to incorporate interactivity into their applications. As a consequence, interaction represents a major overhead for developers, and users are faced with inconsistent interaction models across different displays. This paper describes the results of the evaluation of a widget toolkit for generalized interaction with public displays. Our toolkit was developed for web-based applications and it supports multiple interaction mechanisms, automatically generated graphical interfaces, asynchronous events and concurrent interaction. We have evaluated the toolkit along various dimensions - system performance, API usability, and real-world deployment - and we present and discuss the results in this paper.(undefined

Application diversity in open display networks

We envision that future public display networks will be more interactive and open to applications from third parties similar to what we already have with smartphones. This paper investigates the application landscape for interactive public displays aiming to understand what would be the design and usage space for this type of applications. In particular, we explore people’s perceptions and expectations regarding the diversity of applications that may emerge in future application ecosystems for public displays. We have devised a research methodology anchored on what is currently the rich and diverse range of applications in the mobile application market. We used a set of 75 mobile applications from Google Play application store and asked 72 participants about their relevance for public displays. The results showed that people had a clear preference for applications that disseminate content, and also that these preferences are affected by the type of location where the displays are deployed. These insights improve the understanding of the variables that may affect diversity in future display application ecosystems and inform the development of potential app stores in this context.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A runtime lifecycle for interactive public display applications

—Public display systems are becoming increasingly complex. They are moving from passive closed systems to open interactive systems that are able to accommodate applications from several independent sources. This shift needs to be accompanied by more flexible and powerful application management. In this paper, we propose a runtime lifecycle model for interactive public display applications that addresses several shortcomings of current display systems. Our model allows applications to load their resources before they are displayed, enables the system to quickly pause and resume applications, provides strategies for applications to terminate gracefully by requesting additional time to finish the presentation of content, allows applications to save their state before being destroyed and gives applications the opportunity to request and relinquish display timeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interaction tasks and controls for public display applications

Public displays are becoming increasingly interactive and a broad range of interaction mechanisms can now be used to create multiple forms of interaction. However, the lack of interaction abstractions forces each developer to create specific approaches for dealing with interaction, preventing users from building consistent expectations on how to interact across different display systems. There is a clear analogy with the early days of the graphical user interface, when a similar problem was addressed with the emergence of high-level interaction abstractions that provided consistent interaction experiences to users and shielded developers from low-level details. This work takes a first step in that same direction by uncovering interaction abstractions that may lead to the emergence of interaction controls for applications in public displays. We identify a new set of interaction tasks focused on the specificities of public displays; we characterise interaction controls that may enable those interaction tasks to be integrated into applications; we create a mapping between the high-level abstractions provided by the interaction tasks and the concrete interaction mechanisms that can be implemented by those displays. Together, these contributions constitute a step towards the emergence of programming toolkits with widgets that developers could incorporate into their public display applications.The research has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant agreement no. 244011 (PD-NET). Jorge Cardoso has been supported by "Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia" (FCT) and "Programa Operacional Ciencia e Inovacao 2010", co-funded by the Portuguese Government and European Union by FEDER Program and by FCT training Grant SFRH/BD/47354/2008