Jumping on the Bandwagon: Overcoming Social Barriers to Public Display Use

The fear of social embarrassment has been identified as a significant barrier to people’s interactions with public large interactive displays (PLIDs). Prior research has also shown that the presence of others at a display can help to mitigate this issue by drawing on people’s innate need to belong and social curiosity. This research investigates the potential to replicate this social effect, within the display itself, by drawing on prior interface design approaches that attempt to emulate the “bandwagon-effect”. This effect refers to the tendency for people to mimic the thoughts and behaviors of others. In a four-day field experiment, we deployed three different PLID interfaces featuring bandwagon and call-to-action design concepts. The study found that both the bandwagon and call-to-action designs were effective for engaging passersby, but each influenced different stages of the overall interaction process. We discuss the design implications of our findings, especially the need for socially-safe PLID interactions.

[1]  Jorge Gonçalves,et al.  What makes you click: exploring visual signals to entice interaction on public displays , 2013, CHI.

[2]  Markku Turunen,et al.  Semi-Automated, Large-Scale Evaluation of Public Displays , 2018, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[3]  Paul Marshall,et al.  Display Blindness?: Looking Again at the Visibility of Situated Displays using Eye-tracking , 2015, CHI.

[4]  Erik Duval,et al.  Understanding Engagement with Interactive Public Displays: an Awareness Campaign in the Wild , 2014, PerDis.

[5]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  Requirements and design space for interactive public displays , 2010, ACM Multimedia.

[6]  M. Kendall.  Statistical Methods for Research Workers , 1937, Nature.

[7]  W. Wayne Fu,et al.  Aggregate bandwagon effect on online videos' viewership: Value uncertainty, popularity cues, and heuristics , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[8]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Usability engineering , 1997, The Computer Science and Engineering Handbook.

[9]  Jorge Gonçalves,et al.  Toward Meaningful Engagement with Pervasive Displays , 2016, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[10]  Jan O. Borchers,et al.  Overcoming Assumptions and Uncovering Practices: When Does the Public Really Look at Public Displays? , 2008, Pervasive.

[11]  Mark R. Leary,et al.  Responses to Social Exclusion: Social Anxiety, Jealousy, Loneliness, Depression, and Low Self-Esteem , 1990 .

[12]  Jörg Müller,et al.  The Audience Funnel: Observations of Gesture Based Interaction With Multiple Large Displays in a City Center , 2011, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[13]  C. Marsh.  Back on the Bandwagon: The Effect of Opinion Polls on Public Opinion , 1985, British Journal of Political Science.

[14]  Stacey D. Scott,et al.  Overcoming Interaction Barriers in Large Public Displays Using Personal Devices , 2014, ITS '14.

[15]  Florian Alt,et al.  Understanding Display Blindness in Future Display Deployments , 2015, PerDis.

[16]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces , 2003, INTERACT.

[17]  Sebastian Boring,et al.  Proxemic peddler: a public advertising display that captures and preserves the attention of a passerby , 2012, PerDis.

[18]  R. Edelmann.  Social Embarrassment: An Analysis of the Process , 1985 .

[19]  H. Leibenstein.  Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand , 1950 .

[20]  Ronald L. Rogowski,et al.  The End Game in Presidential Nominations , 1981, American Political Science Review.

[21]  Stacey D. Scott,et al.  Increasing Passersby Engagement with Public Large Interactive Displays: A Study of Proxemics and Conation , 2018, ISS.

[22]  Eva Hornecker,et al.  Designing Interactive Advertisements for Public Displays , 2017, CHI.

[23]  T. Erne.  Public Display? , 2012 .

[24]  R. Baumeister,et al.  The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[25]  Wendy Ju,et al.  Animate Objects: How Physical Motion Encourages Public Interaction , 2010, PERSUASIVE.

[26]  JungAe Yang,et al.  Effects of Popularity-Based News Recommendations (“Most-Viewed”) on Users' Exposure to Online News , 2016 .

[27]  Derek L. Hansen,et al.  Impact of Popularity Indications on Readers' Selective Exposure to Online News , 2005 .

[28]  I. Campbell.  Chi‐squared and Fisher–Irwin tests of two‐by‐two tables with small sample recommendations , 2007, Statistics in medicine.

[29]  Mitchell Harrop,et al.  Uncovering the Honeypot Effect: How Audiences Engage with Public Interactive Systems , 2016, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[30]  Andrew Vande Moere,et al.  The concurrent use of touch and mid-air gestures or floor mat interaction on a public display , 2017, PerDis.

[31]  Psychometric Properties of Farsi Version of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) , 2013 .

[32]  Qian Xu,et al.  The bandwagon effect of collaborative filtering technology , 2008, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[33]  Marko Jurmu,et al.  Multipurpose Interactive Public Displays in the Wild: Three Years Later , 2012, Computer.

[34]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  Display Blindness: The Effect of Expectations on Attention towards Digital Signage , 2009, Pervasive.

[35]  Paul W. Ballantine,et al.  Deal is on! Why people buy from daily deal websites , 2014 .

[36]  Florian Alt,et al.  Looking glass: a field study on noticing interactivity of a shop window , 2012, CHI.

[37]  Diana C. Mutz.  Impersonal influence: Effects of representations of public opinion on political attitudes , 1992 .

[38]  Rosta Farzan,et al.  Spreading the honey: a system for maintaining an online community , 2009, GROUP '09.