Public spaces represent a big part of our daily lives. We encounter different people everyday, yet we don’t have a lot of social interactions with them. Aiming at increasing social interactions between strangers in a public spaces, raising to their attentions daily topics for discussions, and making them more engaged in their community, a public tangible interactive installation would be developed in this research process which aims at creating a reflective, collaborative, and entertaining experience.
Furthermore, Open Data is used to reach this research goal, by creating an awareness campaign about what is Open Data through the interactive installation in a public space. Open Data is defined as the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. As a strong connection exist between the initial aim of this research and Open Data, this research would further investigate the possibility of designing an interactive installation to create an awareness about Open Data to the public in the streets, by giving them an opportunity to also explore and understand those data. Interface and interaction modality
The installation is composed of three different stations tackling three different aspects of Open Data. a A data station that creates a basic awareness of the difference between open and closed data. A visualization station that gives citizens a platform to explore those data and see it in a more understandable format. Lastly the information station, in which users get more informed about the importance of Open Data in their everyday lives. User Experience
In all three station, simple and intuitive interactions were chosen to encourage users to explore the installation without needing any explanation. The drawers in the first station, the use of USB in the second one and finally the big button to print content. Additionally all interfaces are familiar and easy to understand how to interact with. The installation also encourage collaborative behavior between users, by comparing different datasets. This also open a discussion and a reflective space for users to interact with each others socially, and cognitively. Finally, the stations are divided to create more space for people to move around and use the installation at the same time, nevertheless the whole system is dynamic in the sense that users would move from a station to the other to reach to explore more different visualizations and interactions. For those reasons, the experience of the users can be described as interactive, intuitive, and collaborative. Main References
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