Sharing multimedia content with interactive public displays

Abstract

Plasma Posters are large screen, digital, interactive poster-boards situated in public spaces, designed to facilitate informal content sharing within teams, groups, organizations and communities. While interest i interactive community poster boards has grown recently, few successful examples have been reported. In this paper we describe an ongoing installation of Plasma Posters within our organization, and report qualitative and quantitative data from 20 months of use showing the Posters have become an integral part of information sharing, complementing email and Web-based sharing. Success factors include our design process, the reliability and flexibility of the technology and the social setting of our organization. We briefly describe three external installations of the Plasma Poster Network in public places. We then reflect on content posting as "information staging" and the ways in which the public space itself becomes part of the "interface" to content.