Reveal-it!

Abstract

Public displays and projections are becoming increasingly available in various informal urban settings. However, their potential impact on informing and engaging citizens on relevant issues has still been largely unexplored. In this paper, we show that visualizations displayed in public settings are able to increase social awareness and discourse by exposing underlying patterns in data that is submitted by citizens. We thus introduce the design and evaluation of Reveal-it!, a public, interactive projection that facilitates the comparison of the energy consumptions of individuals and communities. Our in-the-wild deployment in three distinct physical locations provided insights into: 1) how people responded to this form of display in different contexts; 2) how it influenced people's perception and discussion of individual and communal data; and 3) the implications for a public visualization as a tool for increasing awareness and discourse. We conclude by discussing emerging participant behaviors, as well as some challenges involved in facilitating a socially motivated crowd-sourced visualization in the public context.

'A bit like British Weather, I suppose'

“…Our work differs from ambient displays in that it is directed at users explicit attention. Closer to our work, Valkanova et al [38] report the design and evaluation of Reveal-it!, a public display that shows a comparison of self-reported energy consumption. Results from 3 deployments in public locations for a total of 20 days suggest that the display was largely successful in engaging the audience in reflecting about their own energy consumption, comparing it to the consumption of others.…”

How the Arrangement of Content and Location Impact the Use of Multiple Distributed Public Displays

“…Interactive public displays can facilitate the simultaneous gathering and conveying of different types of civic information from, and to, citizens [11,29]. As such, studies have proposed the civic potential of public polling displays as a platform for citizens to be seen and heard [8,12], to evoke a sense of community [18], to trigger civic discourses between local passers-by [27], or to act as data-informed conversation starters [12,30].…”

“…By situating or embedding [35] the data in an interpretable, physical context, passers-by are encouraged to reflect on the behaviors that caused particular patterns, mainly around locally relevant or contested topics [2]. Here, data is treated as a boundary object that allows citizens to familiarize themselves about sensor-evidenced issues with personal relevance [29,32]. Often a form of public polling is integrated to trigger curiosity and as a data source that in and by itself sparks discussion [11,12].…”

An analysis of persuasive technologies for energy demand side management

“…Enfin, les SIPs restants sont, sauf un, des interfaces graphiques ambiantes (9,1%, soit 4/44) affichées sur des appareils mobiles ou via des appareils de projection (Abstract Ambient [57], PowerViz [45], Nuage Vert [18], Reveal-it ! [65] [33], Abstract Ambient [57] et PowerViz [45]) et seulement un SIP fixe est à la frontière entre l'espace domestique et public (BoEL [33]).…”