We explore how smart, portable, tangible, and borrowable museum displays can be used to expand museum outreach, and provide tools for measuring user engagement. Our prototype, MobileMuseum, is a portable museum display on wheels, housing digitally-fabricated replicas of artifacts from a national science and technology museum. To track interactions without cameras, we embedded photo and magnetic door sensors and RFID tags and antenna. Our deployment study was carried out for 2 months and included 4 different locations (2 recreational and 2 educational). Data collected from 6 sensors, 261 hours of field observations, 17 filled questionnaires, and 14 interviews helped us understand interaction patterns. Qualitative and quantitative findings revealed that self-monitored interactions encouraged deeper open-ended exploration. Social sharing increased among people in groups while lower foot traffic increased engagement duration. We present generalizable opportunities for self-monitored Interfaces that lends themselves to social circulation, ‘honeybee-effect’, ‘order effect’, and ‘leftovers’ from users.

HCI researchers are continually exploring new ways of engaging the public in participatory design and bringing creative making research activities to new audiences. In this paper, we interviewed individuals who independently began public and DIY installations for sharing miniature art among their neighbours. During the COVID-19 pandemic, participatory miniature art exchanges, commonly known as Free Little Art Galleries (FLAGs), organically spread in response to lockdowns and institutional constraints. In this qualitative study, we interviewed 20 FLAG ‘curators’ to understand the implications involved in setting up and maintaining these long-term deployments. From the analysis of these interviews, we provide 5 practical recommendations on supporting these types of deployments, and discuss how HCI researchers can expand upon these DIY participatory practices to bring creative ideation activities on the future of technology to broader audiences.

“Libraries of Things” are tangible collections of borrowable objects. There are many benefits to Libraries of Things such as making objects and skill-building accessible, reducing waste through the sharing of items, and saving costs associated with purchasing rarely-used items. We introduce the first HCI study of Library of Things by interviewing 23 librarians who run a variety of collections such as handheld tools, gear, and musical instruments – within public institutions and more grass-roots efforts in the private sector. In our findings, we discuss the challenges these collections experience in changing behavioural patterns from buying to borrowing, helping individuals ‘try new things’, iterating to find sharable items, training staff, and manual intervention throughout the borrowing cycle. We present 5 opportunities for HCI research to support interactive skill-sharing, self-borrowing, maintenance recognition and cataloguing ‘things’, organizing non-uniform inventories, and creating public-awareness. Further in-the-wild studies should also consider the tensions between the values of these organizations and low-cost convenient usage.

Pandemic lockdowns created new barriers for HCI researchers, but also provided new opportunities for deeper engagement and reflection in our home environments. Five participants were introduced with a design brief on self-isolation and engaged 12 of their friends and family in the design process of in-the-isolated-wild deployments. By analysing the design process, we found that –while ‘making from home’– our participants noticed the subtlety of the interactions and materials, the processes of remembrance embedded in craft, the use of imperfection and metaphor in homeware, and how ambient presence can provide emotional support. We then conducted a follow-up study on the benefits and limitations of using a crafting approach while ‘making from home’ and discuss the tensions that novices experience while designing TUIs in such an environment. Our results expand the literature by highlighting the benefits, limitations, and trade-offs of user-led design, DIY user empowerment, and harnessing the power of craft.