Vote with your feet : hyperlocal public polling for urban screens

Technological advances have led to an ongoing spread of public displays in urban areas. However, they still mostly show passive content such as commercials and digital signage. Researchers took notice of their potential to spark situated civic discourse in public space and have begun working on interactive public display applications. Attracting people’s attention and providing a low barrier for user participation have been identified as major challenges in their design. This thesis presents Vote With Your Feet, a hyperlocal public polling tool for urban screens allowing users to express their opinions. Similar to vox populi interviews on TV or polls on news websites, the tool is meant to reflect the mindset of the community on topics such as current affairs, cultural identity and local matters. It shows one Yes/No question at a time and enables users to vote by stepping on one of two tangible buttons on the ground. This user interface was introduced to attract people’s attention and to lower participation barriers. Vote With Your Feet was informed by a user-centred design approach that included a focus group, expert interviews and extensive preliminary user studies in the wild. Deployed at a bus stop, Vote With Your Feet was evaluated in a field study over the course of several days. Observations of people and interviews with 30 participants revealed that the novel interaction technology was perceived as inviting and that Vote With Your Feet can spark discussions among co-located people

Investigating conflicts of interests between stakeholders of public display app stores

Public displays showing static content such as news and advertisement are very common, but are often ignored of users expecting them to show uninteresting content. Although applications showing dynamic content which could reduce the display blindness exist, distribution channels and concepts for successfully moderating user-generated content on public displays are still missing. We developed an app store for public displays and analyzed six potential moderation strategies for, in particular, user-generated content. To do this, we conducted an online survey. Survey participants mostly specified that content moderation is necessary and preferred a reactive moderation strategy. Moreover, they expected their messages to appear instantly. Therefore, we developed the UniDisplay application and did an in-the-wild-deployment to investigate the impacts of moderation delays on user behavior. We conducted data and content analyses, observations, a survey and interviews with users of our application. Hence, we can show that already a short delay time of messages (90 seconds) may confuse users and that the delay time is not the only strong factor for posting to a display. On this basis, we built a theoretical concept for integrating content moderation in public display app stores. In the long term, understanding the impacts of moderation strategies for public displays will help to build trust between different stakeholders such as display owners and users. In addition, it will cause public display content to become more dynamic and therefore more interesting for the users.Displays im öffentlichen Raum, die statischen Inhalt wie z.B. Nachrichten oder Werbung anzeigen, sind weit verbreitet. Sie werden jedoch sehr oft von Benutzern ignoriert, da diese erwarten, dass nur uninteressanter Inhalt angezeigt wird. Obwohl bereits Anwendungen existieren, die dynamischen Inhalt anzeigen und damit die Aufmerksamkeit der Benutzer erhöhen könnten, fehlen Plattformen zur Verteilung der Anwendungen und Konzepte für die erfolgreiche Moderation von dynamischem Inhalt auf öffentlichen Displays. Wir entwickelten einen App Store für öffentliche Displays und analysierten sechs potentielle Moderationsstrategien, insbesondere für nutzergenerierten Inhalt. Wir führten außerdem eine Online-Umfrage durch. Die Teilnehmer gaben mehrheitlich an, dass Inhaltsmoderation notwendig ist und bevorzugten eine reaktive Moderationsstrategie. Außerdem erwarteten sie, dass Nachrichten sofort auf dem Display erscheinen. Des Weiteren entwickelten wir das UniDisplay und führten Daten- und Inhaltsanalysen, Beobachtungen, eine Umfrage und Interviews mit den Benutzern unserer Anwendung durch. Wir zeigen, dass bereits eine kurze Verzögerungszeit der Nachrichten (90 Sekunden) für Verwirrung bei den Benutzern sorgen kann und dass die Verzögerungszeit nicht der einzige Faktor ist, der beim Veröffentlichen einer Nachricht relevant ist. Auf dieser Basis entwickelten wir ein theoretisches Konzept wie Inhaltsmoderation in App Stores für öffentliche Displays integriert werden kann. Auf lange Sicht wird das Verständnis über die Auswirkungen verschiedener Moderationsstrategien auf Displays dazu beitragen, dass das Vertrauen zwischen den verschiedenen Interessengruppen wie Displaybesitzern und Benutzern wächst. Zusätzlich hilft das Verständnis dabei, dass der Inhalt von öffentlichen Displays dynamischer und damit auch interessanter für die Benutzer wird

Rural Communities and Pervasive Advertising

Digital signage is most commonly seen in urban environments targeting large groups of viewers. We believe that there is also a role for pervasive technology in smaller communities, including in rural areas that are typically late to receive the benefits of new technologies. This chapter describes a recent pervasive advertising display deployed in Wray, a village in North West England, which was developed with the involvement of community members and evaluated ‘in the wild’. Our research contributes an exploration of rural communities as a site for pervasive digital signage, including our experiences relating to the design of the display and findings relating to its use in the community