Designing the spectator experience

Reeves, Stuart; Benford, Steve; O'Malley, Claire; Fraser, Mike

Abstract

Interaction is increasingly a public affair, taking place in our theatres, galleries, museums, exhibitions and on the city streets. This raises a new design challenge for HCI, questioning how a performer s interaction with a computer experienced is by spectators. We examine examples from art, performance and exhibition design, comparing them according to the extent to which they hide, partially reveal, transform, reveal or even amplify a performerts manipulations. We also examine the effects of these manipulations including movements, gestures and utterances that take place around direct input and output. This comparison reveals four broad design strategies: `secretive,' where manipulations and effects are largely hidden; `expressive,' where they are revealed, enabling the spectator to fully appreciate the performer's interaction; `magical,' where effects are revealed but the manipulations that caused them are hidden; and finally `suspenseful,' where manipulations are apparent, but effects only get revealed when the spectator takes their turn.

Citation

Reeves, S., Benford, S., O'Malley, C., & Fraser, M. (2005). Designing the spectator experience.

• Conference Name: SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
• Deposit Date: Nov 1, 2005
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 9, 2007
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1020600