SenScreen: A Toolkit for Supporting Sensor-enabled Multi-Display Networks

Over the past years, a number of sensors have emerged, that enable gesture-based interaction with public display applications, including Microsoft Kinect, Asus Xtion, and Leap Motion. In this way, interaction with displays can be made more attractive, particularly if deployed across displays hence involving many users. However, interactive applications are still scarce, which can be attributed to the fact that developers usually need to implement a low-level connection to the sensor. In this work, we tackle this issue by presenting a toolkit, called SenScreen, consisting of (a) easy-to-install adapters that handle the low-level connection to sensors and provides the data via (b) an API that allows developers to write their applications in JavaScript. We evaluate our approach by letting two groups of developers create an interactive game each using our toolkit. Observation, interviews, and questionnaire indicate that our toolkit simplifies the implementation of interactive applications and may, hence, serve as a first step towards a more widespread use of interactive public displays.