"Everyone Is Talking about It!"

Abstract

The deployment of technology interventions, such as public displays and mobile apps, in community settings has been found to engage people in sharing and comparing their opinions. Our research is concerned with how to extend this to community-wide participation by devising and deploying multiple voting devices and visualisations. We present an in-the-wild study where a number of shopkeepers along a street participated by placing a novel voting device in their shops to collect locals' opinions. Results were displayed outside the shops, on the pavement. This distributed set-up was found to promote public debate on local issues, particularly around the perceived divide between people on either end of the street. We outline our design process and describe the impact of distributing voting devices and situated visualisations in a local community. \