Ivan Elhart

Designing shared public display networks: implications from today's paper-based notice areas

Large public displays have become a regular conceptual element in many shops and businesses, where they advertise products or highlight upcoming events. In our work, we are interested in exploring how these isolated display solutions can be interconnected to form a single large network of public displays, thus supporting novel forms of sharing access to display real estate. In order to explore the feasibility of this vision, we investigated todays practices surrounding shared notice areas, i.e. places where customers and visitors can put up event posters and classifieds, such as shop windows or notice boards. In particular, we looked at the content posted to such areas, the means for sharing it (i.e., forms of content control), and the reason for providing the shared notice area. Based on two-week long photo logs and a number of in-depth interviews with providers of such notice areas, we provide a systematic assessment of factors that inhibit or promote the shared use of public display space, ultimately leading to a set of concrete design implication for providing future digital versions of such public notice areas in the form of networked public displays.

Scheduling Interactive and Concurrently Running Applications in Pervasive Display Networks

Todays digital signage systems typically show advertisements in the form of images or short videos that their owners and/or operators have arranged in well-defined sequences well before presentation time. In order to make such displays more attractive, both researchers and advertisers have recently begun to explore the concept of interactive applications that allow passers-by to directly or indirectly control a displays content. To integrate such applications with traditional digital signage concepts requires new forms of shared control over application and content scheduling, ultimately creating multi-user and multi-application display systems that go beyond predefined sequences of content items. In this paper we present a system for scheduling both interactive content and traditional digital signage content on networked public displays. We offer a formal notation for describing such novel scheduling problems, based on a list of requirements for scheduling interactive and concurrently running display applications, and describe a web-based application development framework and API for dynamic application scheduling. We also report on an initial prototype system that we have deployed on a university campus.

Control and scheduling interface for public displays

Social media platforms such as Flicker, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have opened up new possibilities for providing content on large public displays. Integrating interactive elements in a public display, such as (virtual) Keyboards and Webcams, can additionally stimulate in-situ content production. Both social media content and such in-situ content are cheap to produce, always fresh, and potentially community sourced, thus increasing relevance for passersby. However, not all social media applications and content entries may be appropriate in a particular display setting and showing user contributed content on public displays requires new forms of content control and scheduling. In this demo we show: 1) a control interface for display owners to manage the overall behavior of their displays, and 2) post-moderation mechanisms for controlling and removing potentially inappropriate user contributed content from public displays. The control interface and moderation mechanisms are designed for a university environment and were inspired by two short pilot test deployments and a focus group with the university officials.

Tandem Browsing Toolkit: Distributed Multi-Display Interfaces with Web Technologies

We present the Tandem Browsing toolkit that allows developers to build multi-display and multi-user applications for pervasive displays with web technologies. Existing tools for this purpose either focus on user needs, rather than developer needs, or do not rely on open web standards. Our proxy-based toolkit allows developers to conceptualize, design and implement interfaces that orchestrate multiple devices in navigating through online content, without any modifications to user devices. We first describe the design and implementation of our toolkit, followed by a qualitative validation with web developers. Then we illustrate the functionality of the toolkit with three prototypes. We conclude with a discussion on the toolkits characteristics and capabilities.

Key challenges in application and content scheduling for Open Pervasive Display Networks

Todays digital signage systems typically show content that has been scheduled well in advance by their respective “owners”, i.e., companies or individuals who paid for and/or operate the public display. However, with the shift to open display networks that can obtain content from many sources and the corresponding advances in interaction and sensing technologies, the scheduling requirements in this domain are set to change radically. For example, we envision that displays in our environment will soon be able to adapt to their surroundings and allow viewers to appropriate them by actively selecting and/or contributing content. Such levels of interactivity and context-awareness will require new approaches to content scheduling. In this paper we discuss the challenges faced in developing new forms of application and content scheduling for Open Pervasive Display Networks.

Supporting interactivity on a ski lift

Today, a wide variety of technologies and devices are available for skiers. Those gadgets perform a number of tasks to improve the overall skiing experience, such as collecting personal performance data, recording memorable moments, or assisting in communication with group members. In this position paper we outline our empirical findings from unstructured interviews with skiers and ethnographical observations during several field trips to skiing resorts. In particular, we aim to understand the challenges and opportunities of using personal and situated devices on a ski lift. Based on the findings, we discuss appropriate interaction techniques and propose possible applications that could support user needs and enhance the overall skiing experience.

SkiAR: Wearable Augmented Reality System for Sharing Personalized Content on Ski Resort Maps

Winter sports like skiing and snowboarding are often group activities. Groups of skiers and snowboarders traditionally use folded paper maps or board-mounted larger-scale maps near ski lifts to aid decision making: which slope to take next, where to have lunch, or what hazards to avoid when going off-piste. To enrich those static maps with personal content (e.g., pictures, prior routes taken, or hazards encountered), we developed SkiAR, a wearable augmented reality system that allows groups of skiers and snowboarders to share such content in-situ on a printed resort map while on the slope.

Integrating interactive applications with digital signage: Towards a scheduling framework for pervasive displays

Todays digital signage systems typically show content that has been scheduled well in advance by their respective owners. However, we envision that displays in our environment will soon be able to dynamically adapt to their surroundings and allow viewers as well as display owners to appropriate them by actively selecting and contributing content through interactive public display applications. Such multi-user and multi-application display environments require new forms of application and content scheduling that go beyond a predefined sequence of content. In this paper we present a scheduling framework for public displays, adapted from general scheduling theory, as a common notation that can be used to describe different application and content presentation requirements posed by both display owners and display viewers and define the overall behavior of public displays.

Design and evaluation of a wearable AR system for sharing personalized content on ski resort maps

Winter sports like skiing and snowboarding are often group activities. Groups of skiers and snowboarders traditionally use paper maps or board-mounted larger-scale maps near ski lifts to aid decision making: which slope to take next, where to have lunch, or what hazards to avoid when going off-piste. To enrich those static maps with personal content (e.g., pictures, prior routes taken, or hazards encountered), we developed SkiAR - a wearable augmented reality system that allows groups of skiers and snowboarders to share such content on a printed panoramic resort map. The contribution of our work is twofold: (1) we developed a system that offers a novel way to review and share personal content in situ while on the slope using a resort map; (2) we report on the results from a qualitative analysis of two user studies to inform the design and validate the usability and perceived usefulness of our prototype.

A good balance of costs and benefits: convincing a university administration to support the installation of an interactive multi-application display system on campus

Interactive digital signage systems allow passers-by to take (temporary) control of a public display in order to select content and applications of interest, or even upload content of their own. Not surprisingly, display owners are hesitant to embrace such interactivity, given the uncertainty of what will be shown on their displays. In this paper we summarize our experience of deploying an interactive multi-application display system in the context of a university environment, and in particular our engagements with display owners (i.e., university administration) in order to convince them and get their support for the installation and deployment of such a system. We present the results of semi-structured interviews with display owners regarding their motivations, needs, and concerns with respect to the deployment of such a system at our university. While one cannot generalize from our results, we nevertheless believe that our experiences offer helpful advice to developers of such systems (and/or researchers interested in designing and studying them) in order to aid them in successfully gathering the support of these important stakeholders.