In recent years, new type of public displays have captured the interest of researchers-displays with the ability to move freely in three-dimensional space. We refer to such display systems as Airborne Multimedia Display (AMD) systems. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of requirements for developing interactive AMD applications based on extensive literature survey of the related work and from our own experience of flying AMD systems. We then outline the design and implementation of DroneCAST: a programming toolkit for developing AMD applications with remote delivery and control mechanism for multimedia content with IoT middleware as the core part of the system. Finally, we build a sample AMD application with the toolkit to further illustrate the applicability of the system.

It is of paramount importance that cultural heritage professionals are directly involved in the design of digitally augmented experiences in their museum spaces. We propose an approach based on a catalogue of reusable narrative and interaction strategies with step-by-step instructions on how to adapt and instantiate them for a specific museum and type of visitors. This work is conducted in the context of the European-funded project meSch.

There is increasing interest in using digital signage to deliver highly personalised content. However, display personalization presents a number of architectural design challenges in particular, how best to provide personalisation without unduly compromising viewers' privacy. While previous research has focused on understanding specific elements of the overall vision, our work presents details of the first significant attempt at a system that integrates future pervasive display networks and mobile devices to support display personalisation. We describe a series of usage models and design goals for display personalisation and then present Tacita, a system that supports these models and goals. Our architecture includes mobile, display and cloud-based elements and provides comprehensive personalisation features while preventing the creation of user profiles within the display infrastructure, thus helping to preserve users' privacy. An initial evaluation of our prototype implementation of the architecture is also included and demonstrates the viability of the Tacita approach.

Many embedded platforms that support the creation of interactive smart objects have become available over the last years. Arduino, Raspberry Pi, electric imp, mbed, MSP430, and .NET Gadgeteer are examples of hardware platforms with very different properties and capabilities. In order to make interactive artifacts additional sensors, actuators, and networking elements are available for the different platforms. Additionally there are different software environments and development tools that support developers in creating custom applications for embedded systems. It is apparent that one size doesn't fit all and that choosing the right platform and tools is an important step towards an effective solution. In this TEI2014 studio we first provide an overview of available platforms and tools that allow developers to create novel and tangible interactive systems. We will present and discuss developing environments, with a specific focus on browser based programming tools and social coding. In a second step we will have 2 hands-on sessions, where in each we use a different platform and create an initial functional prototype. The aim is to provide the participants with an overview of existing embedded development tools suitable for creating interactive artifacts and to provide some hands on-experience with different new platforms.

Falling hardware prices and ever more displays being connected to the Internet will lead to large public display networks, potentially forming a novel communication medium. We envision that such networks are not restricted to display owners and advertisers anymore, but allow also passersby (e.g., customers) to exchange content, similar to traditional public notice areas, such as bulletin boards. In this context it is crucial to understand emerging practices and provide easy and straight forward interaction techniques to be used for creating and exchanging content. In this paper, we present Digifieds, a digital public notice area we built to investigate and compare possible interaction techniques. Based on a lab study we show that using direct touch at the display as well as using the mobile phone as a complementing interaction technology are most suitable. Direct touch at the display closely resembles the interaction known from classic bulletin boards and provides the highest usability. Mobile phones preserve the users' privacy as they exchange (sensitive) data with the display and at the same time allow content to be created on-the-go or to be retrieved.

It has become extremely easy for developers to build custom software for smartphone and tablet computers. However, it is still hard to extend those devices with external electronics, e.g. additional sensors and actuators. In the moment when external hardware can be easily attached to phones and tablets a wide new application space will be opened up. With WebClip we present a device offering digital and analogue I/O ports that can be controlled and monitored by just clipping the device onto a capacitive touch screen. A web page in the browser of the touch screen device is used to control the bi-directional communication. Data from the WebClip to the device is sent by emulating touches on the screen whereas the reverse direction uses light sensors on the bottom side of the clip to receive light sequences emitted by the web page. A simple Javascript API is offered to build custom web applications. We have successfully tested our prototype with a variety of phones and tablet computers and report on performance and limitations.

Drawing and handwriting play a central role in primary schools. So far handwriting is practiced mainly on paper and blackboards. Providing tasks on paper can be challenging in developing countries. With the potential availability of mobile phones in classrooms, there is a new medium that can be used. We determined the effect of different touch technologies on children's handwriting for 18 third grade and 20 sixth grade participants. Children drew and wrote using different input techniques. We measured their performance and asked teachers to assess the legibility. We show that writing on touchscreens is less legible and slower than on paper. Further, the comparison of touchscreen technologies indicates that capacitive screens operated with a stylus yield the highest readability and are faster to use for writing than resistive screens. In contrast to these quantitative findings participants from third grade indicated that they prefer resistive screens with a thin stylus compared to using capacitive screens with a stylus or fingers.

No abstract available.

Traditional public notice areas (PNAs) are nowadays a popular means to publicly exchange information and reach people of a local community. The high usability led to a wide-spread use in stores, cafes, supermarkets, and public institutions. With public displays permeating public spaces and with display providers and owners being willing to share parts of their display space we envision traditional PNAs to be complemented or even replaced by their digital counterparts in the future, hence contributing to making public displays a novel communication medium. In this paper we report on the design and development of Digifieds (derived from digital classified), a digital public notice area. We deployed and evaluated Digifieds in an urban environment in the context of the UbiChallenge 2011 in Oulu, Finland over the course of 6 months. The deployment allowed the users' view to be studied with regard to the envisioned content, preferred interaction techniques, as well as privacy concerns, and to compare them against traditional PNAs.