Vinicius Ferreira

Sharing Wishes on Public Displays: Using Technology to Create Social Places

We present a public-display-and-mobile-based digital art installation named WishBoard that translates the essence of a chalk-and-wall based art installation called ‘Before I Die’ into a technological communal expression. Our studies show that public sharing of personal wishes leverage the connection inside a community, creating a feeling of neutral ground for gathering, giving a sense of third place independent of physical constrains, named thirdplaceness. The installation allows people to freely express their wishes, with certain personalization, and provides a public visualization of all shared wishes promoting face-to-face conversations. We conducted two deployments using our installation in a ‘socially abandoned’ space. Analyzing the shared wishes content and people’s behavior when observing the wishes popping up on the public displays, we were able to notice the essential role that public displays combined to mobile devices interaction can play in creating a community meeting place when providing a way for self-expression.

Somebody Is Peeking!: A Proximity and Privacy Aware Tablet Interface

As smartphones and tablets are now widespread, accessing or even sharing sensitive content in public areas has become commonplace. This applies to both personal contexts (e.g. checking banking information in a coffee shop) and professional contexts (e.g. sharing patient information in a hospital ward). It is important to explore ways to support visual privacy that are appropriate for mobile device use in public settings and in dynamic workflows. In this paper we present the design, prototype implementation, and ongoing evaluation of a range of privacy notifications and privacy control mechanisms for tablets. Preliminary results show that: 1) spatial information such as distance and orientation can be used to mediate privacy management for tablet interfaces. 2) Privacy notifications and control mechanisms should be designed to complement our existing physical awareness and protection mechanisms. 3) Selecting a specific design is highly context-dependent.

Designing ICT for Thirdplaceness

Thirdplaceness is the sense of being in a third place without architectural constraints. Third places are places that host regular, spontaneous, democratic, neutral, informal, and pleasurable anticipated gathering of individuals in which people can express themselves freely. These places contrast with the realms of home and work (first and second places), having an important role in community life in supporting civic engagement and community strength. Oldenburg defined the need for and properties of third places more than two decades ago, describing them as the heart of a community’s social vitality. Bars, bakeries, parks, town squares, theaters, and churches are typical examples of potential third places. In third places, thirdplaceness occurs often maintaining and reinforcing in the community this sense of third place. Once society and technology have changed since Oldenburg introduced the concept of third place, we describe in this chapter how to design applications for public spaces in order to promote thirdplaceness. In addition, we present and discuss two public installations—Selfie Cafe and WishBoard—used to observe the incidence of thirdplaceness that emerged through the interaction with the interactive system. In both installations, we were able to notice the essential role that Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) can play in promoting self-expression supporting, encouraging, and fostering social interaction and thirdplaceness creating a social place.

Failures Supporting the Evolutionary Design in the Wild of Interactive Systems for Public Spaces

In this paper, we describe the lessons learned from an experience of deploying an interactive public installation adopting a methodology that intertwines aspects of in-the-wild study and evolutionary design. This methodology shrinks the cycle of design of a prototype and allows researchers and practitioners continuously design improvements while they learn from evaluating the prototype in the wild. Thereby, multiple settings can be explored, minimizing the need to conduct new experiments that demand time and resources. Considering the metaphor of a wishing well, we designed a public interactive installation, allowing people to make wishes using their personal or a shared device to throw a virtual coin into a real water fountain augmented with a wall-sized screen displaying a “pool of wishes.” We deployed this interactive installation in a passageway of building for eight days, collecting data from observations, questionnaires, interviews, photos and video recordings. Based on the failures in our first cycle of design with the prototype, we present our findings and directions to apply our methodology. We claim the need of a pilot study in situ and having a team committed in collecting and analyzing data, discussing the insights and changes. In addition, the system design must support predictable, orderly and managed evolution. Finally, we contribute to the ubicomp field, demonstrating the implications for evaluating evolutionary prototype in the wild.

Selfie cafe: socialization in public spaces

Once Online Social Networks became popular in the last decade, people tend to spend a fair amount of time in the virtual world. As a consequence, real encounters, especially with non-related people tend to not be encouraged or even exciting anymore. Aware that mobile devices become more popular and powerful considering pervasiveness and ubiquitousness, we strategically decided to use technology in order to support and promote people gathering in public spaces. In this paper, we present Selfie Cafe, an Urban Computing application for leveraging socialization. The application was deployed in the wild to see how people would react to it in specific places where socialization would be expected but was not happening. Results of the Selfie Cafe installation show that it helped setting a more playful mood in the place, an increase in the time spent by people in there as well as supporting interactions among locals, acquaintances and strangers.

Exploring Privacy Notification and Control Mechanisms for Proximity-Aware Tablets

In hospitals, offices and other settings, professionals face the challenge of accessing and sharing sensitive content in public areas. As tablets become increasingly adopted in work environments, it is important to explore ways to support privacy that are appropriate for tablet use in dynamic, mobile workflows. In this research we consider how spatial information can be utilized to support both individual and collaborative work in a natural way while respecting data privacy. We present a proof-of-concept implementation of a proximity-aware tablet, and a range of privacy notification and control mechanisms designed for such a tablet. Results from a user study support the idea that interpersonal distance and orientation can be used to mediate privacy management for tablet interfaces. Selecting a specific design for privacy threat notification and response is highly context-dependent-for example, in health care the first priority is to not impede the fluid exchange of information.

On-the-fly Prototyping: Designing, Testing, and Evolving an Interactive Public Installation in Loco

In this paper, we describe the experience of deploying an interactive public installation adopting aspects of in-the-wild study and evolutionary design, described here as on-the-fly prototyping. This approach enables continuous design improvements while learning from evaluating the user interaction with the prototype as it evolves in the wild. This approach offers much potential use benefits for researchers and practitioners, minimizing the need to conduct multiple experiments that demand time and resources. We describe our lessons learned and directions to apply this approach and evaluate in-the-wild. We emphasize the need of a pilot study in situ and a team committed to collect and analyze data, discuss the insights and changes, given the time pressure and new scenarios that can emerge. In addition, the system design must support predictable, orderly and managed evolution. Finally, we show that learning and iterating in the wild is feasible, contributing to the study of ubiquitous computing.