The Invisible Display – Design Strategies for Ambient Media in the Urban Context

This paper presents contextual strategies for staging ambient interfaces in public space. While ambient displays are often treated and evaluated as solitary objects in existing literature, I will argue that the experience of an ambient display is not determined in the first place by its intrinsic qualities, but essentially by the way how it is situated within its local context. The six described strategies show how cultural notions and practices can be incorporated into the design of ambient displays. Some of them seem counterintuitive and take advantage of phenomena that a designer usually might want to avoid. At the same time they are an invitation for further experiments and cross-pollination between the fields of architecture, public art and interaction design.