[ISEA2015] Paper: Claude Fortin & Kate Hennessy – Designing Interfaces to Experience Interactive Installations Together

Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: Interface design; interactive displays; crossmodality; natural user interfaces (NUIs); Social NUIs; public space; urban interventions.

Researchers at the Making Culture Lab use ethnographic methods to study how interactive technology supports digital practices in diverse cultural environments. This paper reports on how certain design aspects of display systems implemented in public space can induce social encounters and awareness. Field observations made since 2012 show that interface design may be a key factor in structuring such shared experiences. In 2014, HCI researchers introduced the Social Natural User Interfaces (Social NUIs) analytical framework to help HCI practitioners design interfaces that better support collaboration and cooperation in co-located multiuser interaction scenarios. This study describes four interactive media façades deployed in Montréal’s Quartier des Spectacles to suggest that electronic artists intuitively anticipated the Social NUIs relational approach to interface design. Analyses highlight how the artists used crossmodal interfaces – also based on intuitive modes of interaction such as gesture, touch, and speech – to design interactive installations that engage people beyond the ubiquitous single-user “social cocooning” interaction scenario. The aim of this research is to illustrate how artistic architecturalscale digital public display installations has the potential to parallel, drive, and contribute to, socially concerned design thinking.

  • Kate Hennessy, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada. I am a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from the University of British Columbia (Anthropology). As the director of the Making Culture Lab at SIAT, my research explores the role of digital technology in the documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage, and the mediation of culture, history, objects, and subjects in new forms. My video and multimedia works investigate documentary methodologies to address Indigenous and settler histories of place and space. Current projects include the collaborative production of virtual museum exhibits with Aboriginal communities in Canada; the study of new digital museum networks and their effects; ethnographic research on the implementation of large scale urban screens in public space; and as a founding member of the Ethnographic Terminalia curatorial collective, the intersections of anthropology and contemporary art practices. hennessy.iat.sfu.ca/mcl
  • Claude Fortin, Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada. social smart cities; public interaction with and through technology; immersive installations; digital displays and media façades.

Full Text (PDF) p. 146-153