Reading Responses to Interaction with Large Public Displays: Part II

Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces

In reading this paper, four contributions came clear to me:

1) Private communication using a public display: Private communication using a public display is accomplished by visualizing a light pattern on a public display, Hello.World, that has several meanings. A public meaning is learned and shared amongst the people looking at it, for example, to see how many people are working in an office. It can also be used to display private information. When in proximity to the display, the light pattern changes to an encoded pattern. A handheld device is required to interpret the meaning.

2) Public broadcast of personal information: Another usage of Hello.World broadcasts personal information. The light pattern can “show off” to others, for example, the amount of work accomplished by the person standing there.

3) Wall-to-device interaction: Similar to previous work, a device can be held close to a “cell” of Hello.World to access specific content.

4) Zones of interaction: The zones of interaction described in the system are based on being able to touch a cell (cell interaction zone), close enough to the display for identity awareness (notification zone), and ambient zone (nobody around).

User Detection for a Multi-touch Table via Proximity Sensors


This short paper has a single contribution, to use local proximity information to orient objects at a table to participants. Identity and specific devices are unnecessary. Previous work has devised methods of rotating objects on a table, but that can happen automatically as participants gather around it.