Capture the Moment

Abstract

Urban screens are becoming a common element of our city landscape. As such they offer new ways of connecting people that occupy public space, e.g., by taking situated snapshots through a display-attached camera. In this paper we present a first longitudinal case study of 12 weeks of such an application -Moment Machine -deployed "in the wild" on an urban screen facing the street. We report findings from 1189 photos taken, 13 interviews, and 3 weeks of observations that show engagement stimulated by situated snapshots within a place-based community where the screen is located. We also analyze interaction log files to describe how often users interacted, what type of interactions they had and how long they lasted, and overall engagement on a weekly basis and throughout the week. Based on our experience, we provide three take-away snippets for designers of similar urban screen experiences.

Architecture and Interaction

“…For example, people are able to post digital pins and posters to displays (Jose et al 2013), or post and read classifieds on a public display (Alt et al 2011a), or express themselves freely by posting photos to a display network via a display-attached camera (Memarovic et al 2015). Another change from the early days is that today networked public displays would typically have multiple applications running on them (Clinch et al 2011;North et al 2013;Ojala et al 2012), thus providing more ways to connect people within and across public spaces.…”

“…Within this area CLIO project (Ringas and Christopoulou 2013) is a prominent example as it allowed people to upload stories of historical/local relevance for a place in the city of Oulu or Corfu (two separate deployments) in the form of text, pictures, and videos that were shared across a display network. Another and more simple example is the Moment Machine (Memarovic et al 2015) that allows passers-by to take photos and leave them in the urban setting and also share them across the network, thus collecting and creating memories within and across public spaces. Instant Places' "Pins" (Jose et al 2013) that allowed football fans to express their belonging to a community by displaying football club's emblem is another example of an application that allows leaving a mark on a networked public display.…”

“…Current research has supported this in various ways. For example, this can be done through lightweight liking of the content (Memarovic et al 2013) or taking a photo via a display attached camera and posting it to a display network, thus contributing to the creation of the community's history (Memarovic et al 2015). Ringas and Christopoulou (2013) supported recording a video about a specific location, thus allowing people to leave their sentiments and marks.…”

“…For example, engaging with public displays and leaving a mark in the setting can lead to the creation of awareness of the diverse people that thrive in a public space, as people can observe others interacting with a public display and anyone can use it to leave their mark. If these interactions are recorded somehow, e.g., through photos (Memarovic et al 2015) or videos (Ringas and Christopoulou 2013) they would contribute to the creation of local history that can be transmitted to other displays in the network. This locally recorded history can then be moved across the displays in the network, affectively transmitting connections across a greater community and signaling the sense of belonging, and at the same time infusing diversity in distant and different places.…”

“…Networked public displays amplify casual/chance encounters and social interaction between passers-by and local community members (Memarovic et al 2013;Müller et al 2014), exchange and community interaction (Alt et al 2011a), marking the territory and creating historical connections with the locality and local community (Ringas and Christopoulou 2013;Memarovic et al 2015;Jose et al 2013), visibility of different social, interest, age and other groups, public debate, links to distant places (Ringas and Christopoulou 2013;Memarovic et al 2015;Jose et al 2013).…”