Lessons learned: game design for large public displays

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the design and deployment of Polar Defence, an interactive game for a large public display. We designed this display based on a model of "users" and their interactions with large public displays in public spaces, which we derived from prior work. We conducted a four-day user study of this system in a public space to evaluate the game and its impact on the surrounding environment. Our analysis showed that the installation successfully encouraged participation among strangers, and that its design and deployment addressed many of the challenges described by prior research literature. Finally, we reflect on this deployment to provide design guidance to other researchers building large interactive public displays for public spaces.

REFERENCES

• 1: Agamanolis, S. 'Designing displays for Human Connectedness'. In: Workshop on Public, Community and Situated Displays at CSCW 2002, New Orleans.
• 2: Rafael Ballagas , Jan Borchers , Michael Rohs , Jennifer G. Sheridan, The Smart Phone: A Ubiquitous Input Device, IEEE Pervasive Computing, v.5 n.1, p.70, January 2006 [doi>10.1109/MPRV.2006.18]
• 3: Harry Brignull , Shahram Izadi , Geraldine Fitzpatrick , Yvonne Rogers , Tom Rodden, The introduction of a shared interactive surface into a communal space, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 06-10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois, USA [doi>10.1145/1031607.1031616]
• 4: Brignull, H. and Rogers, Y. Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces. In Proceedings of INTERACT'03 (Zuerich, Switzerland, Sep. 2003), pp. 17--24
• 5: Laurent Denoue , Les Nelson , Elizabeth Churchill, AttrActive windows: dynamic windows for digital bulletin boards, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.765966]
• 6: Desktop Tower Defender. http://www.handdrawngames.com
• 7: Dix, A. and Sas, C. Public displays and private devices: A design space analysis, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI 2008)
• 8: Aiman Erbad , Michael Blackstock , Adrian Friday , Rodger Lea , Jalal Al-Muhtadi, MAGIC Broker: A Middleware Toolkit for Interactive Public Displays, Proceedings of the 2008 Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, p.509-514, March 17-21, 2008 [doi>10.1109/PERCOM.2008.109]
• 9: Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday: Garden City, New York, 1959
• 10: Huang, E. M. Koster, A., Borchers, J. (2008) "Overcoming assumptions and uncovering practices: When does the public really look at public displays?" To appear in the Proceedings of the Sixth International Comference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2008). Sydney, Australia
• 11: Elaine M. Huang , Elizabeth D. Mynatt , Daniel M. Russell , Alison E. Sue, Secrets to Success and Fatal Flaws: The Design of Large-Display Groupware, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.26 n.1, p.37-45, January 2006 [doi>10.1109/MCG.2006.21]
• 12: Elaine M. Huang , Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Semi-public displays for small, co-located groups, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642622]
• 13: Kyratso G. Karahalios , Judith S. Donath, Social catalysts: enhancing communication in mediated spaces, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2004
• 14: Tim Paek , Maneesh Agrawala , Sumit Basu , Steve Drucker , Trausti Kristjansson , Ron Logan , Kentaro Toyama , Andy Wilson, Toward universal mobile interaction for shared displays, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 06-10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois, USA [doi>10.1145/1031607.1031649]
• 15: Stuart Reeves , Steve Benford , Claire O'Malley , Mike Fraser, Designing the spectator experience, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1054972.1055074]
• 16: Tom Rodden, Populating the application: a model of awareness for cooperative applications, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.87-96, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240200]
• 17: Daniel M. Russell , Rich Gossweiler, On the Design of Personal & Communal Large Information Scale Appliances, Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, p.354-361, September 30-October 02, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• 18: SMART Technologies. http://smarttech.com/
• 19: Anthony Tang , Mattias Finke , Michael Blackstock , Rock Leung , Meghan Deutscher , Rodger Lea, Designing for bystanders: reflections on building a public digital forum, Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2008, Florence, Italy [doi>10.1145/1357054.1357193]
• 20: Tuulos V., Scheible J. and Nyholm H., Combining Web, Mobile Phones and Public Displays in Large-Scale: Manhattan Story Mashup. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Toronto, Canada (May 2007).
• 21: Daniel Vogel , Ravin Balakrishnan, Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users, Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 24-27, 2004, Santa Fe, NM, USA [doi>10.1145/1029632.1029656]
• 22: VoiceXML Forum. http://www.voicexml.org/

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.m Miscellaneous

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
cell phones, gaming, interactive large public displays, personal devices, shared entertainment, short messages services (SMS), user study