This paper describes MStoryG, a digital art installation to be situated in a future open-air museum. Our goal with MStoryG is to provoke and engage visitors in collaborative storytelling by exploiting the ambiguity that visitors interpret from an airport split-flap display used as a medium for supporting Exquisite Corpse. In order to evaluate our concept we created a software replica of an airport split-flap display, deployed as an interactive public art installation. Visitors tweet, or through an adjacent laptop, contribute to the overall storytelling process by providing a story fragment that appears on the split-flap display for other visitors to read and build on. We argue that in the right conditions ambiguity can trigger curiosity and invite interaction, but special care is needed to avoid confusing and alienating users. Here we report on our ongoing public installation and next steps in deploying MStoryG with the physical board in locus.
In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of Watt-I-See (WISE), a tangible interactive installation aimed at probing awareness in two target audiences (children and adults) about renewable energy resources that could inform eco-feedforward strategies. Our system combines a tangible interface representing five different energy sources, with a set of Lego™ blocks used to manipulate different weather conditions that affect the available energy mix. Through the evaluation of WISE, our main goal was to expose users to the effort necessary to produce the energy used in our day-to-day lives. We evaluated the installation separately for children and adults. The focus on children was due to their importance in the overall household consumption and their role in future scenarios where consumers will have to adapt to the availability of renewable energy sources. The focus on adults was to observe the impact of such information in their decision making regarding their routines. Our findings highlight the success of the interface in engaging children and adults, creating awareness between weather conditions and energy production and the fossil-fuel energy baseline in the grid. Overall, the study highlights the importance of providing a close point-of-interaction feedback as it enables a better understanding of energy-related decisions, reactions, and availability of resources.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS• A tangible interactive installation was designed to probe awareness about energy resources.• The installation was evaluated with two separate types of users: adults and children.• Users perceived its information as useful and could integrate it into their daily lives.• New directions for eco-feedback systems that use strategies to control or modify the consumption based on the availability of resources.
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