Improving the Discoverability and Usability of Interactive Public Displays

The fear of social embarrassment has been identified as a significant barrier to people’s interactions with public large interactive displays(PLIDs). Prior research has also shown that the presence of others at a display can help to mitigate this issue by drawing on people’s innate need to belong and social curiosity, and in addition, has shown that large interactive displays deployed in public spaces are often underutilized, or even un-noticed, phenomena connected to ‘interaction’ and ‘display blindness’, respectively. 

Our research investigates the potential to replicate this social effect, within the display itself, by drawing on prior interface design approaches that attempt to emulate the “bandwagon-effect”, and through the use of visual content designed to evoke direct or indirect conation (the mental faculty related to purpose or will to perform an action), and different animation triggers (random or proxemic), progressively revealing more information about the display and entice interaction.

Relevant Publication(s):

Pafla M., Wong C., Gillis D., Pfeil U., Scott, S.D. (2019). Jumping on the Bandwagon: Overcoming Social Barriers to Public Display Use. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2019, May 28-31, 2019, Kingston, ON. (doi)