Paper Reading #5: Looking glass: a field study on noticing interactivity of a shop window

Introduction
Title: Looking glass: a field study on noticing interactivity of a shop window
Author Bios:

• Jörg Müller-TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Robert Walter-TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Gilles Bailly-TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Michael Nischt-TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Florian Alt-University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Related Work

• Through the looking glass: you can play against your own reflection
• The Looking Glass IDE for learning computer programming through storytelling and history exploration: conference workshop
• Alice on both sides of the looking glass: Performance, installations, and the real/virtual continuityThrough the looking glass: the use of lenses as an interface tool for Augmented Reality interfaces
• Through the looking glass: the use of lenses as an interface tool for Augmented Reality interfaces
• Through the looking glass of immaterial labor
• Through the looking glass: game worlds as representations and views from elsewhere
• Chained displays: configurations of public displays can be used to influence actor-, audience-, and passer-by behavior
• How to evaluate public displays
• Interactive television: new genres, new format, new content
• Exploring factors that influence the combined use of mobile devices and public displays for pedestrian navigation

This work doesn't seem very novel as there are a lot of papers out on this subject, but they did talk about related work well in the paper.

Summary

This study was mainly about seeing what factors contributed to noticing the interactivity of something. They had 3 separate studies from which they collected data. They had a pre-study where they set up a prototype at a university to see how people would notice and what they would do. What they got from the pre-study was that people tend to interact in groups and they stopped to interact rather than doing it as they passed by. The next study was a lab study where they just tried to see how long it would take for someone to realize that a display was interactive. The final study was a field study where they set up a interactive display in a public area for 3 weeks and changing it a little each week to see how different user representations effected the time it took to realize the interactivity.

Evaluation

In the paper they said that they collected both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative from observations, interviews, and video recording. Quantitative from complete interaction logs and videos from a depth camera. What they found was that between a mirror image, a silhouette, and an avatar representation the mirror image was the thing that got the most attention the quickest. They also found that if one person starts interacting that more and more people will start to interact with the display since they see that it is interactive so easily. 

Discussion

This topic was very interesting, it didn't seem very novel as there findings seem to have been obvious. It takes awhile for people to notice something is interactive and if they see someone else interacting with it then of course they are going to go play with it too, it seems like human nature to me. The only novel part was that  instead of having something on the screen saying that it was interactive they tried to see how long it would take without that. Overall it was a very interesting study though, I would like to see what else they do with things like this.