We discuss the challenges of opening up networks of public displays to wider control (based on our experiences of eCampus) and postulate what might happen if we open up to applications also (global networks of displays, content and applications, c.f. http://pd-net.org)

1. Towards Open
Pervasive Displays!
Adrian Friday, Lancaster University, UK!
Thanks to: Nigel Davies, Sarah Clinch,
Oliver Storz, Christos Efstratiou and the
eCampus and PD-NET teams.

2. I’m from Lancaster in UK!
About 1 hour from Liverpool and
Manchester (United)!
About 250 miles from London!
Experimental systems focused
department!
!

3. My background!
Mountain" Equator: Physical -"
rescue! Digital!
1990! 1995! 2000! 2005! 2010!
Context-aware" Open Interactive"
Mobile" GUIDE! Public Displays!
Collaboration!

4. Why real world systems?!
To probe – beyond participatory design!
Ultimate ‘acid test’ of acceptability!
Teaches you about Ubicomp ‘for real’!
Naturalistic evaluation (you say ‘it’s good for doing X for
community Y’, is it?)!
Increasingly the ‘gold standard’ in major conferences!!
Championed in Oulu!!

5. Why not real"
world systems?!
Uncontrolled environment!
Effort (initial, ongoing support and in
generating high quality content and
applications)!
Remote: “out of sight, out of mind”!
Unsupervised!
Often built out of COTS hardware
not designed for the domain!
The unexpected happens!!

6. The only future for displays?!
Is Pervasive Advertising the
only future for ubicomp
displays?!
Minority Report, 20th Century Fox, 2002 http://bit.ly/cKSOop

7. Overview!
Experiences of opening up our network of displays on
campus!
Particularly a user and display owner facing interface!
Postulate how we might move beyond this for
applications!
Some early ideas about challenges and avenues to
explore!

8. FLUMP Adaptive Signage, 1996!
Badges triggered And then we had to
personal pages take it reasons!! fire
safety
down for
embedding the output
of crude ‘apps’!
J. Finney, N. Davies, FLUMP - The FLexible
Ubiquitous Monitor Project, Proceedings of the
3rd Cabernet Radicals Workshop, Connemara,
May 1996

9. e-Campus, 2005-!
Large-scale deployment of networked displays across
the campus (approx £0.5 million budget)!
• To create a large scale experimental testbed in
public displays and ubiquitous computing across campus!
• To act as a catalyst for world class research in ubiquitous
computing!
• To enhance the image of Lancaster University for staff,
students and visitors!
Specific focus on creating an open research
infrastructure – but that only paid for the kit and running
real world systems is hard!!

10. Requirements for standard content
and proprietary applications."
Content from a range of different
sources: arbitration, priorities and
preemption, wide range of scheduling
criteria (interaction, time, …), dynamic
length!
O. Storz, A. Friday, N. Davies, J. Finney, C. Sas, and J. Sheridan.
Public ubiquitous computing systems: Lessons from the e-campus display deplo
IEEE Pervasive Computing, 05(3):40–47, 2006.

11. The e-Campus platform for display
networks!
Flexible distributed infrastructure!
• Small set of management processes on each display machine
communicate over Elvin pub-sub event broker!
• Low level API for building range of schedulers and
presentation tools!
• Abstractions hide specialised hardware, AV switching and
distribution!
• Provide support for transactions on displays (Control,
Atomicity and Isolation) – can use them in concert!
• HTTP based high-level API supporting the display of sets of
content subject to a set of constraints!

12. Status: 70 displays: 40
door displays, 25 Large
LCD panels in colleges
and foyers, and 5
projected displays"
(e.g. theatre)!
Ref: Keith Cheverst!

13. Applications!
• Bluetooth Friendly Name
(Map, Google, Flickr,
YouTube, TinyURL…)!
• Follow me Content (LitFest)!
• ‘Capture the Campus’ MR
game!
• Main ‘app’ is digital
N. Davies, A. Friday, P. Newman, S. Rutlidge and O.
Storz signage!!
Using Bluetooth Device Names to Support
Interaction in Smart Environments
MobiSys 2009

14. Applications!
But, these are all ‘insider’
apps – by us, trusted,
using our internal
framework. More
complex apps require
manual
deployment.!

15. Letting go of top down control of content!
OPENING UP CONTENT AND
DEVOLVING CONTROL!

16. The Channel System!
Initially – production and experimental systems co-
existed - users sent us their content!!
The Channel systems allowed trusted user groups to
schedule content on their own and others displays – it’s
deliberately simple!
Separates content provision and display
ownership!
The primary method for control of the e-Campus displays
(for approaching 3 years)!

17. Users create private or
Channel! public channels ‘shared
folders’ for content.
Channels may have time
constraints. Stimulate a
(content) ‘network effect’.!

18. Displays!
Display owners
subscribe to one or
more channels!

19. And it works fairly well…!
33 user groups (about 80 active users) - > 50% have
used the system for > 1 year!
Over 1,700 unique content items (3,700 content items)
since 2008!
Supports a variety of media (images, movies, urls)!
The only serious issue we have is poor handover when
staff changes are made!
Some evidence of gaming the system!

20. Typical content!

22. 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
2008-05
2008-06
url
2008-07
2008-08
video
image
stream
2008-09
2008-10
2008-11
unsupported
2008-12
2009-01
2009-02
2009-03
2009-04
2009-05
2009-06
2009-07
2009-08
2009-09
2009-10
2009-11
2009-12
2010-01
2010-02
2010-03
2010-04
2010-05
2010-06
2010-07
2010-08
2010-09
2010-10
2010-11
2010-12
2011-01
2011-02
2011-03
2011-04
Links to
deeper!
Looking
effective!!
and effort)!
~40% of channel
providers have used
video at some point!
images (toolchain
webpages least
> 80% of content are

23. Surprisingly little temporal and
locative coherence!
Rarely bound to location, but sometimes
audience!
24% of content items had no obvious time constraints!
8% had a validity of one day (sometimes repeated)!
8% had a validity of up to week!
12% up to a month!
21% a validity of 2-3 months, and!
12% a validity of 1 year!
!

24. Content
lifetime is
short (7-10 Or long
days)! (~120 days),
- roughly a
University
Semester!
People are much better at adding
content than removing it!!

25. A,B-1'%)8:)
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26. CHANNEL_SUSPEND
100 channels (64 currently
80
CHANNEL_DELETE marked ‘active’)!
CHANNEL_ADD
CHANNEL_ACTIVATE
50% are
60
shared, 50%
private!
Number of events
40 Considerable differences
between users!
- to organise,
organisational change!
20
Channels are
0
suspended
but not often
Arts
Building 1
Building 2
Business
Careers
Chap
Dep E
Dep P
Disp. Dev.
Estates
Faculty 1
Faculty 2
L. Tech.
PR
Proj 1
Res 1
Res 2
Res 3
Res 4
Res 5
Res 6
Res 7
Res 8
Res 9
St. Exp.
St. Recruit.
St. Services
St. Union
Student
Theatre
Volunt.
removed!

27. Discussion!
The channel system has been very effective at devolving
control of content scheduling!
No! Regular usersiscan’t
The combination file system + web approach very
successful! create the apps! So
It’s conceptually simple and easy to learn! who can?!
User peeves: can’t order ‘slides’, can’t preview channel
content!
Would this approach work for applications and more
interactive content?!

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Kids' WB, 1995-2001

29. An “Open” Approach!
Current systems are closed – small networks under a single
management domain!
Difficult to introduce new applications, new content or interaction!
A new infrastructure that supports a “global” network of
displays & interaction and personalisation on that scale!!
New approach for applications that decouple display
ownership from content production!
Need to tap into wide (global) community of developers, 3rd
party applications!

30. Open is more content, developers,
communities and customers!
http://econ.st/ifJr5g

31. So, writing apps is hard… we need
app stores!!
For fun,"
for profit!
http://read.bi/johtdH

32. But that may not be entirely straightforward…!
CHALLENGES!

33. Scale: who controls
what - Control vs.
Abuse, hierarchy,
overlay, cloud, P2P?!
http://bit.ly/bcChQj

34. Personalisation,
context-aware or
privacy violation?!
http://www.cityware.org.uk/

35. Who pays, and
who gets the
revenue?! More stakeholders,
apps not entirely
personal,
infrastructure not
owned by the end
user!

36. What might we see (as well as inevitable advertising)?!
DISPLAY APP MARKET!

37. Being Artistic!
http://www.simultaniaproject.com/!

38. Inevitably… games, social media!
http://locamoda.com

39. Surprising hobbies…
http://www.laptopreviews.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/grandma-in-the-park3.jpeg
Airtime to Local Issues!
http://www.truepunk.com/wp-content/uploads/hitthelights.jpg
Memarovic N, Langheinrich M. “Your place or mine?” – Connecting
communities and public places through networked public displays.
Urban Internet of Things - Towards Programmable Real-time Cities
(UrbanIOT 2010); Workshop at the 2nd Intl. Conference on the Internet
of Things (IOT2010), December 2010

40. Sustainable local food?!
Photographer: Sarah Lee, http://bit.ly/knnKkU

41. Part of pan-global events?!
http://www.avert.org/

42. Wider: Events, Disasters, Human
Rights, Climate Change!
Image of Tokyo Tsunami removed for copyright reasons.!

43. Support local events,"
share globally…!
Communities of
interest rather than
geography? !
Some rights reserved, Sepultura, http://bit.ly/k6dM3j2

44. http://pd-net.org
The Internet of displays ?!
“Change spaces with public displays - from spaces
where information is pushed to passers-by in the form of
adverts to spaces that can be tailored to reflect the
hopes, aspirations and interests of its occupants using
content and applications created anywhere in a global
network.”!
http://www.facebook.com/pdnet

45. To conclude!
The channels system lets us open up control of our
network to interest groups!
We create a network of content that is shared – its been
largely successful too!
The next step is moving to a pan-European testbed (3
nodes so far: Switzerland, Germany and Portugal)!
Join in helping to overcome the challenges!"
http://pd-net.org!

46. A unique opportunity! http://www.ubiweek.fi/
A globally unique infrastructure testbed of displays and
wireless coverage!
A model for conducting ‘in the wild’ Ubicomp research!
An incredible pioneering achievement – and we
appreciate this having tried something similar!!
A proving ground for future Ubicomp business ideas!

47. Adrian Friday!
School of Computing and
Communications!
InfoLab21, Lancaster University!
a.friday@lancaster.ac.uk!
Tel: +44 (0)1524 510326!