Hannu Kukka

Multipurpose Interactive Public Displays in the Wild: Three Years Later

Extended research on interactive public displays deployed in a city center reveals differences between the publics stated information needs and their actual information behavior and highlights effects that an artificial environment cannot duplicate.

UBI-Hotspot 1.0: Large-Scale Long-Term Deployment of Interactive Public Displays in a City Center

We present the design, implementation, deployment and evaluation of novel urban computing infrastructure called ‘UBI-hotspot’. It is effectively a large interactive public display embedded with other computing resources. We have deployed a network of UBI-hotspots around downtown Oulu, Finland, to establish a public laboratory for conducting experimental ubiquitous computing research in authentic urban setting with diverse real users and with sufficient scale and time span. We focus on the first version of the UBI-hotspot which offers a wide range of services via different interaction modalities. We analyze the usage and user acceptance of the UBI-hotspots from qualitative and quantitative data collected over a period of eight months. Our first observations show that this type of infrastructure may be a useful addition to the urban space.

From school food to skate parks in a few clicks: using public displays to bootstrap civic engagement of the young

We present Ubinion, a service that utilizes large public interactive displays to enable young people to give personalized feedback on municipal issues to local youth workers. It also facilitates discussion and sharing the feedback online using modern social networking services. We present the motivation and rationale behind Ubinion and analyze the results from three large-scale user trials conducted in authentic settings. The evaluation shows that young users are positive about adopting Ubinion, and that they quickly appropriated its use to provide feedback outside the intended scope of the system, but still reflecting their concerns. We argue that Ubinions design as a fun and informal tool is appropriate for its purpose, and discuss the versatility of public interactive displays as a municipal feedback medium and as content sources for online communities in general.

Supporting distributed private and public user interfaces in urban environments

Proliferation of large public displays in urban cityscape gives rise to applications distributed between public displays and mobile devices. However, real deployment of distributed applications on top of this new infrastructure is challenging as no commonly accepted architectural solutions exist to rely on. In this paper, we present a platform supporting distributed application user interfaces on interactive large public screens and personal mobile devices. We demonstrate the functionality and potential of our approach by presenting a deployment of the platform with multiple distributed applications in authentic setting in a city center. We found this platform feasible to deploy interactive, appealing services on top of, and a non-cost information pick-up service as the most appealing to users.

Web-based framework for spatiotemporal screen real estate management of interactive public displays

In this paper we present a web-based framework for spatiotemporal screen real estate management of interactive public displays. The framework facilitates dynamic partitioning of the screen real estate into virtual screens assigned for multiple concurrent web applications. The framework is utilized in the implementation of so-called UBI-hotspot, which provides various information services via different interaction modalities including mobile. The framework facilitates seamless integration of third party web applications residing anywhere in the public Internet into the UBI-hotspot, thus catering for a scalable and open architecture. We report the deployment of a network of indoor and outdoor UBI-hotspots at downtown Oulu, Finland. The quantitative data on the usage of the UBI-hotspots implicitly speaks in favor of the practical applicability of the framework.

What's in it for me: Exploring the Real-World Value Proposition of Pervasive Displays

The future of pervasive public display networks is loaded with high expectations. Non-commercial displays are commonly envisaged as proliferating in numerous contexts and domains, where they offer various uses for a variety of everyday users. In this paper we discuss why this vision is perhaps over optimistic and the realities of deploying, designing and understanding such systems should not be taken for granted. Understanding the value of public display deployments in respect to location managers, and the real-world costs of longitudinal in-the-wild deployments are both commonly overlooked in much of the related literature. Within this paper we develop a discussion in reference to several real-life events by presenting examples from the past five years of running the open UBI Oulu initiative in Oulu, in northern Finland. The purpose of this research is to raise awareness about these aspects of in-the-wild display deployments and to be support the research community in creating sustainable public display deployments.

Open Urban Computing Testbed

We present a unique urban computing testbed for studying the utilization of ubiquitous computing technology in the public urban space of a city center. The testbed comprises of a wide range of pervasive computing infrastructure and different middleware resources. We demonstrate the applicability and benefits of the testbed in evaluating technology pilots and prototyping new ubiquitous services in real-world urban setting. We conclude with a discussion on the challenges in deploying this kind of a large-scale testbed in a public urban space.

Urban computing in theory and practice: towards a transdisciplinary approach

In this paper we present a multi-themed discussion on urban computing. We call for a more transdisciplinary approach to the field, and point out that urban computing systems are always necessarily an amalgamation of three interrelated components -- space, people, and technology. Because of these three elements, we argue that computer scientists cannot expect to stand alone and create systems that would respect the complex and messy sociocultural context in which these technologies operate. It is only through a deeper understanding of the existing social, cultural, and political contexts that we can hope to build deployments that respect and enhance the experience of living a technologically mediated life, and this understanding can only be achieved by including researchers from the social sciences as well as architecture and urban design. We will conclude by presenting our vision for a more transdisciplinary approach to urban computing.

BlueInfo: Open Architecture for Deploying Web Services in WPAN Hotspots

We introduce BlueInfo, an open architecture for deploying web services in WPAN hotspots for cost-free context-aware mobile access over Bluetooth. A BlueInfo hotspot either pushes subscribed services at desired intervals to registered devices (BlueInfo Push) or alternatively the user invokes a particular service by sending a simple keyword query to the hotspot (BlueInfo Pull). The BlueInfo hotspot requests the service from the origin server in the Internet and relays the response to the mobile device, possibly after adaptation for mobile viewing. The usability of BlueInfo Pull in comparison to a mobile phone browser is demonstrated with an empirical user evaluation conducted in a laboratory setting.

Lessons Learned from the Deployment and Maintenance of UBI-Hotspots

We provide an experience report of the deployment and maintenance of urban computing infrastructure called UBI-hotspot. It is effectively a large interactive public display embedded with other computing resources such as access points of different wireless networks. We have installed a network of 12 UBI-hotspots in key indoor and outdoor locations around downtown Oulu, Finland. We describe the remote monitoring and management tools we have adopted for the maintenance of the UBI-hotspots. We conclude with a discussion on our lessons learned which should be valuable for other researchers planning similar deployments in public urban spaces.