14-06-2014, 12:12 PM
Interactive Community Bulletin Boards as Conversational Hubs
and Sites for Playful Visual Repartee
[attachment=64885]
Abstract
In this paper we describe an interactive community
bulletin board installed within a neighborhood café and art
gallery, and the interactions that take place around and
through the board. The board features café information and
email list sign up, but also allows customers to create
publicly displayed, persistent, finger-drawn, digital
scribbles. In providing this community composition and
posting feature, our board differs from more commonly
available designs for one-way advertising of products.
Following analysis of the scribbles, and interviews with
scribble creators and readers, we offer a brief description
of the textual and visual play and repartee patrons engage
in. We discuss content forms posted to the board,
differentiating between solitary and collaborative play,
messaging, and conversational exchange. Our discussion
addresses open questions regarding the perspectives and
theories that can be applied to address this new form of
site-specific, public media exchange.
Introduction
Increasingly public spaces have interactive digital displays
where people can gain access to information, review
merchandize, leave and send messages and/or play with
interactive games [17]. Public displays with aesthetically
appealing form factors have been introduced into work
([1][16][18][19][22][29]), leisure [8], and transitional,
urban spaces [22].
We have previously installed a number of interactive
public displays in organizations both in the United States
[5][6] and in Japan [32]. Such public displays present
opportunities for everyday information encountering [29],
and provide conversational “ice-breakers” or “tickets to
talk” [27] and the potential for establishment or discovery
of “common ground” [9]. They thus potentially spark
and/or enhance face-to-face communications and encourage
social networking beyond the display itself within
organizations and at events like conferences ([6], see also
[26]). In our view (and in most of our installations), the
display sits between physical and digital content-sharing
arrangements; that is, the networked displays are a place for
Communicative Acts and Conversations
There have been many theories posited as to the structure
and nature of conversation. For a communicative act to be
part of a conversation, there needs to be at least a dyad (that is
two people), some form of exchange (spoken or written)
which follows rules, where one “act” assumes, and is
followed by another act, a response. One definition states
“A conversation is an interaction sequence with a defined
beginning and end, turn-taking, and some sort of purpose or
set of goals. Conversations are also governed by rules; they
have structure and display coherence and sense.”
The Canvas Gallery Café
From experience we know interactive poster installations
have varied adoption and use patterns, depending on
context. It is not possible to analyze or understand
interactions with a new technology in isolation from the
existing processes of interaction in a setting. We thus first
present a brief description of the café/gallery, its inhabitants
and existing communication patterns before describing the
installation and use of the eyeCanvas.
Scribbling in public with digital doodles
The scribble interface is shown in Figure 5 as it was being
used to create finger-art drawing to be posted. In terms of
eyeCanvas use, interviews and observations as well as
content and interaction data analysis revealed that by far the
most popular feature was this digital doodle or scribbling.
Scribble creation: general comments
We analyzed the number and type of finger scribbles people
created on the eyeCanvas for display. Our analysis began a
short time after installation in order to avoid novelty effects. A
total of 1466 scribbles were posted from October 8th to
December 17th. Most scribbles were created in the
evenings. There were 10-20 scribble posts on any given
day. After an initial peak in interest, the posting trend
flattened to ~12 posts per day in mid-November, with
spikes in interest every few weeks. With the exception of
scribbles that were considered “unsuitable” due to
potentially offensive content, all scribbles were persistent
and could be reviewed by scrolling through the carousel
interface. Notably this interface did not scale well to the
large number of scribbles (as was noted by one of the
scribblers); a number of redesigns were tested to
accommodate this problem; further discussion of this does
not fit within the scope of this paper.
Play and display, utterances, conversations and
interjections[/b]
Our analyses of scribbling are drawn from three data
sources: observations of individual and collaborative
scribble creation; interviews and conversations with
scribblers; and content and time stamp (i.e., creation time)
analysis of scribbles. Scribbles varied enormously in
production style, from furtive, self conscious creation to
artistic flourish where the scribble is as much a residual
artifact of the performance of creation as an entity in and of
itself. On a number of occasions we observed people
collaborating on the construction of scribble art (Figure 5).
On the Nature of Scribbled Content
Scribbles varied enormously as shown in the figures below
(e.g., Figure 9). There was a clear difference between the
nature of the scribbled content and that left in the
suggestion book, which was the only other public posting
place in the café/gallery [8]. Less than one percent of the
scribbles contained contact information such as phone
number and email addresses on the display. 50% of
postings were drawings. Only 5% of the messages were
suggestions/comments. Out of those, 3% of
suggestions/comments are about the display, not about the
café. There was a correlation between time and
inappropriateness of posts for the café setting;
A typology of scribbles
Extending Burnett‟ s typology of information exchange in
virtual communities [2], we identified the following
categories: hostile postings (spam, flames, derogatory and
sexual content, e.g., Figure 6) and individual/collaborative
positive interactive postings. The latter category is further
subdivided into information seeking/providing (e.g.,
announcements, queries, interest and self promotion, Figure
7) or not information seeking or providing (e.g., gossip,
pleasantries, play, support Figure 8). We also ob served in
the non-information seeking/providing category instances
of graffiti-like “tagging”, identity displays (the “I was here”
or “hello mum” phenomena), and local memes. There were
also instances of playful utterances directed at people or at
the room in general, (“get out of my chair”). Undoubtedly
these are more prominent in this café setting than in online
Threaded exchanges
In this section we present several scenarios that illustrate
conversational engagements with the eyeCanvas. Notably,
when interviewing scribblers and readers alike, we were
often invited to go to the eyeCanvas shown scribbles as the
story of their creation was told. These acts of orientation
and illustration demonstrated the role that these persistent
artifacts took in communication, in this instance used as
illustrative story-telling artifacts for us.
Discussion
In considering the way in which the interactive display
and more specifically the scribble application was adopted
and used in the gallery, we posed the questions: Do the
persistent scribble art and text comments constitute a form
of conversation between patrons, between visitors and the
designers and patrons and the proprietors? Or are they
merely “tickets-to-talk” to use Harvey Sacks‟ term,
meaning the occasion or cue for conversations in passing
encounters ([27]), where the conversations only occur
around or are cued by the technology? Are they simply
different forms of displays such as magnet-held drawings
on a refrigerator or graffiti drawn on a wall? The scribbles
are persistent and they are clearly communicative acts,
Summary and Future work
In this paper we have described our public space
(café/gallery) installation of an interactive community
bulletin board with a persistent scribble creation feature.
We described the adoption of this feature, which was by far
the most popular interaction element of the installation. We
presented some of the items that were produced by the
café/gallery patrons and laid out the beginnings of our
analysis of the communicative aspects of these scribbles.
The scribbles are not simply single contributor personal
comments; they are public property, and being so visible,
are available for comment and present for all to engage
with. Scribbles allow a “user-driven” form of playful
exchange, rather than enforcing our pre-planned notions of
playful interaction.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Gary Hsieh and members of
the FX Palo Alto Laboratory for their part in this project. We
would also like to thank the owners and patrons of the
Canvas Gallery for their participation.
and Sites for Playful Visual Repartee
[attachment=64885]
Abstract
In this paper we describe an interactive community
bulletin board installed within a neighborhood café and art
gallery, and the interactions that take place around and
through the board. The board features café information and
email list sign up, but also allows customers to create
publicly displayed, persistent, finger-drawn, digital
scribbles. In providing this community composition and
posting feature, our board differs from more commonly
available designs for one-way advertising of products.
Following analysis of the scribbles, and interviews with
scribble creators and readers, we offer a brief description
of the textual and visual play and repartee patrons engage
in. We discuss content forms posted to the board,
differentiating between solitary and collaborative play,
messaging, and conversational exchange. Our discussion
addresses open questions regarding the perspectives and
theories that can be applied to address this new form of
site-specific, public media exchange.
Introduction
Increasingly public spaces have interactive digital displays
where people can gain access to information, review
merchandize, leave and send messages and/or play with
interactive games [17]. Public displays with aesthetically
appealing form factors have been introduced into work
([1][16][18][19][22][29]), leisure [8], and transitional,
urban spaces [22].
We have previously installed a number of interactive
public displays in organizations both in the United States
[5][6] and in Japan [32]. Such public displays present
opportunities for everyday information encountering [29],
and provide conversational “ice-breakers” or “tickets to
talk” [27] and the potential for establishment or discovery
of “common ground” [9]. They thus potentially spark
and/or enhance face-to-face communications and encourage
social networking beyond the display itself within
organizations and at events like conferences ([6], see also
[26]). In our view (and in most of our installations), the
display sits between physical and digital content-sharing
arrangements; that is, the networked displays are a place for
Communicative Acts and Conversations
There have been many theories posited as to the structure
and nature of conversation. For a communicative act to be
part of a conversation, there needs to be at least a dyad (that is
two people), some form of exchange (spoken or written)
which follows rules, where one “act” assumes, and is
followed by another act, a response. One definition states
“A conversation is an interaction sequence with a defined
beginning and end, turn-taking, and some sort of purpose or
set of goals. Conversations are also governed by rules; they
have structure and display coherence and sense.”
The Canvas Gallery Café
From experience we know interactive poster installations
have varied adoption and use patterns, depending on
context. It is not possible to analyze or understand
interactions with a new technology in isolation from the
existing processes of interaction in a setting. We thus first
present a brief description of the café/gallery, its inhabitants
and existing communication patterns before describing the
installation and use of the eyeCanvas.
Scribbling in public with digital doodles
The scribble interface is shown in Figure 5 as it was being
used to create finger-art drawing to be posted. In terms of
eyeCanvas use, interviews and observations as well as
content and interaction data analysis revealed that by far the
most popular feature was this digital doodle or scribbling.
Scribble creation: general comments
We analyzed the number and type of finger scribbles people
created on the eyeCanvas for display. Our analysis began a
short time after installation in order to avoid novelty effects. A
total of 1466 scribbles were posted from October 8th to
December 17th. Most scribbles were created in the
evenings. There were 10-20 scribble posts on any given
day. After an initial peak in interest, the posting trend
flattened to ~12 posts per day in mid-November, with
spikes in interest every few weeks. With the exception of
scribbles that were considered “unsuitable” due to
potentially offensive content, all scribbles were persistent
and could be reviewed by scrolling through the carousel
interface. Notably this interface did not scale well to the
large number of scribbles (as was noted by one of the
scribblers); a number of redesigns were tested to
accommodate this problem; further discussion of this does
not fit within the scope of this paper.
Play and display, utterances, conversations and
interjections[/b]
Our analyses of scribbling are drawn from three data
sources: observations of individual and collaborative
scribble creation; interviews and conversations with
scribblers; and content and time stamp (i.e., creation time)
analysis of scribbles. Scribbles varied enormously in
production style, from furtive, self conscious creation to
artistic flourish where the scribble is as much a residual
artifact of the performance of creation as an entity in and of
itself. On a number of occasions we observed people
collaborating on the construction of scribble art (Figure 5).
On the Nature of Scribbled Content
Scribbles varied enormously as shown in the figures below
(e.g., Figure 9). There was a clear difference between the
nature of the scribbled content and that left in the
suggestion book, which was the only other public posting
place in the café/gallery [8]. Less than one percent of the
scribbles contained contact information such as phone
number and email addresses on the display. 50% of
postings were drawings. Only 5% of the messages were
suggestions/comments. Out of those, 3% of
suggestions/comments are about the display, not about the
café. There was a correlation between time and
inappropriateness of posts for the café setting;
A typology of scribbles
Extending Burnett‟ s typology of information exchange in
virtual communities [2], we identified the following
categories: hostile postings (spam, flames, derogatory and
sexual content, e.g., Figure 6) and individual/collaborative
positive interactive postings. The latter category is further
subdivided into information seeking/providing (e.g.,
announcements, queries, interest and self promotion, Figure
7) or not information seeking or providing (e.g., gossip,
pleasantries, play, support Figure 8). We also ob served in
the non-information seeking/providing category instances
of graffiti-like “tagging”, identity displays (the “I was here”
or “hello mum” phenomena), and local memes. There were
also instances of playful utterances directed at people or at
the room in general, (“get out of my chair”). Undoubtedly
these are more prominent in this café setting than in online
Threaded exchanges
In this section we present several scenarios that illustrate
conversational engagements with the eyeCanvas. Notably,
when interviewing scribblers and readers alike, we were
often invited to go to the eyeCanvas shown scribbles as the
story of their creation was told. These acts of orientation
and illustration demonstrated the role that these persistent
artifacts took in communication, in this instance used as
illustrative story-telling artifacts for us.
Discussion
In considering the way in which the interactive display
and more specifically the scribble application was adopted
and used in the gallery, we posed the questions: Do the
persistent scribble art and text comments constitute a form
of conversation between patrons, between visitors and the
designers and patrons and the proprietors? Or are they
merely “tickets-to-talk” to use Harvey Sacks‟ term,
meaning the occasion or cue for conversations in passing
encounters ([27]), where the conversations only occur
around or are cued by the technology? Are they simply
different forms of displays such as magnet-held drawings
on a refrigerator or graffiti drawn on a wall? The scribbles
are persistent and they are clearly communicative acts,
Summary and Future work
In this paper we have described our public space
(café/gallery) installation of an interactive community
bulletin board with a persistent scribble creation feature.
We described the adoption of this feature, which was by far
the most popular interaction element of the installation. We
presented some of the items that were produced by the
café/gallery patrons and laid out the beginnings of our
analysis of the communicative aspects of these scribbles.
The scribbles are not simply single contributor personal
comments; they are public property, and being so visible,
are available for comment and present for all to engage
with. Scribbles allow a “user-driven” form of playful
exchange, rather than enforcing our pre-planned notions of
playful interaction.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Gary Hsieh and members of
the FX Palo Alto Laboratory for their part in this project. We
would also like to thank the owners and patrons of the
Canvas Gallery for their participation.