It's Mine, Don't Touch!

TLDR

CityWall, a large multi‑touch display in central Helsinki, was observed over eight days to collect detailed interaction data. The authors aim to analyze how public availability is achieved through social learning and negotiation, why interaction becomes performative, and how the display reshapes public space. They recorded 1,199 users interacting in various social configurations, then qualitatively and quantitatively coded video events to examine social learning, performativity, and spatial restructuring. The analysis uncovered unique public‑use phenomena—crowding, parallel interaction, teamwork, games, transition negotiations, conflict management, gestures, overt remarks, and display marking—and showed that multi‑touch, gesture‑based interaction, and display size differentially influence these uses, offering guidance for urban display design.

Abstract

We present data from detailed observations of CityWall, a large multi-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki, Finland. During eight days of installation, 1199 persons interacted with the system in various social configurations. Videos of these encounters were examined qualitatively as well as quantitatively based on human coding of events. The data convey phenomena that arise uniquely in public use: crowding, massively parallel interaction, teamwork, games, negotiations of transitions and handovers, conflict management, gestures and overt remarks to co-present people, and "marking" the display for others. We analyze how public availability is achieved through social learning and negotiation, why interaction becomes performative and, finally, how the display restructures the public space. The multi-touch feature, gesture-based interaction, and the physical display size contributed differentially to these uses. Our findings on the social organization of the use of public displays can be useful for designing such systems for urban environments.