Augmenting Space: Design approaches for making public interactive displays relevant in hyperconnected societies

Abstract

Modern society is becoming increasingly driven by digital technologies that augment urban environments through digital information. A technology that has been increasingly permeating cities over the years is the Public Interactive Display (PID), a type of public display that accepts input. With PIDs becoming commonplace, personal technologies, such as smartphones and wearables, have also proliferated and with that, society itself has shifted towards a new paradigm of hyperconnectedness, where people are constantly connected to the internet through their personal devices. Considering this, the role of a PID and its relevance to individuals in hyperconnected societies is questionable. Therefore, the overarching aim of this research is to understand how PIDs can be designed so that they are relevant to individuals in hyperconnected societies. This is achieved by first reporting on an observation of non-research, commercial public displays to gain a grounded understanding of the current real-world nature of these technologies and how they currently augment public space. It is followed by an evaluation of PID prototypes in the lab and the wild. The key contributions of this research are: • Contemporary understanding of PIDs and their purpose in the wild - gained through a field observation of non-research PIDs. • Device-free implicit personalisation framework – describing how a PID can be made relevant to individual people without the reliance on intermediary devices for personal information. • Relevance triangle – proposes three factors that can influence the relevance of PIDs to individuals: User, Locale, and Time. • Design patterns – after reviewing previous research, seven design patterns were defined for designing PIDs that are relevant to individuals. These contributions provide a structured approach for future researchers and industry practitioners to design PIDs that are relevant to individuals and have a purpose in hyperconnected societies.