Designing urban media façades

Abstract

Media façades comprise a category of urban computing concerned with the integration of displays into the built environment, including buildings and street furniture. This paper identifies and discusses eight challenges faced when designing urban media façades. The challenges concern a broad range of issues: interfaces, physical integration, robustness, content, stakeholders, situation, social relations, and emerging use. The challenges reflect the fact that the urban setting as a domain for interaction design is characterized by a number of circumstances and socio-cultural practices that differ from those of other domains. In order to exemplify the challenges and discuss how they may be addressed, we draw on our experiences from five experimental design cases, ranging from a 180 m2 interactive building façade to displays integrated into bus shelters.