Sharing multimedia content with interactive public displays

Abstract

Plasma Posters are large screen, digital, interactive posterboards situated in public spaces, designed to facilitate informal content sharing within teams, groups, organizations and communities. While interest in interactive community poster boards has grown recently, few successful examples have been reported. In this paper we describe an ongoing installation of Plasma Posters within our organization, and report qualitative and quantitative data from 20 months of use showing the Posters have become an integral part of information sharing, complementing email and Web-based sharing. Success factors include our design process, the reliability and flexibility of the technology and the social setting of our organization. We briefly describe three external installations of the Plasma Poster Network in public places. We then reflect on content posting as "information staging" and the ways in which the public space itself becomes part of the "interface" to content.

Designing Shared Public Display Networks – Implications from Today’s Paper-Based Notice Areas

“…for a drink or a print job to finish, it is very likely that they browse through the PNA's content. Supporting evidence can be found in [5].…”

“…As mentioned previously, Taylor et al [17] looked into notice board practices in a rural village and informed the design of the Wray Display, a community photo sharing display aimed at understanding how digital displays can help to support communities in suburban areas. Churchill et al's Plasma Poster Network [5] looked into how displaying social media impacts relationships among colocated colleagues in their workplace. The CoCollage [10] aimed at cultivating community in a café by showing posters and quotes and hence enhancing awareness, interaction, and relationship among people.…”

Interaction techniques for creating and exchanging content with public displays

“…The impact of such applications has been demonstrated by several studies. Churchill et al assessed the influence of introducing public displays into an office space [10,11] and published some insights into the augmentation of the user environment. McCarthy et al designed CoCollage, a community supporting social network applications for public displays [23].…”

The LunchTable

“…For example, semi-public display systems have been developed to support people's information needs when not at the desk [28] or to maintain awareness of small groups of people that are co-located or distributed [7], [13]; Müller et al developed an information flow model for relevant information on public displays (e.g., announcements); interactive [4] and ambient displays [11] located in well-traveled locations of organizations have been designed to facilitate non-intrusive sharing of information; and multi-touch tables have been embedded in the home to enable the collaborative control of media [31]. Another direction of research has also explored the installation of large displays in public locations that allow strangers to interact with information and, in some cases with each other [e.g., [17], [11], [20].…”