The Audience Funnel: Observations of Gesture Based Interaction With Multiple Large Displays in a City Center

We present data from observations of Magical Mirrors, a set of four large public displays with gesture based interaction installed in downtown Berlin, Germany. The displays show a mirror image of the environment in front of them and react with optical effects to the gestures of the audience. Observations of audience behaviour revealed recurring behavioural patterns, like glancing at a first display while passing it, moving the arms to cause some effects, then directly approaching one of the following displays and positioning oneself in the center of a display. This was often followed by positioning oneself in the center of the other displays in order to investigate the different effects. From these observations we deduced a framework of interaction with gesture-based public display systems. It describes the phases of passing by a display, viewing & reacting, subtle interaction, direct interaction, multiple interactions and follow-up actions. We collected quantitative data of these behavioural phases by observing 660 passers-by on 2 weekend evenings and show how many passers-by pass the thresholds between these phases. This ‘Audience Funnel’ should provide a framework to encourange systematic investigation of public display systems and enable comparability between different studies. 2 Daniel Michelis1, Jörg Müller2