Interactive Tables in the Wild Visitor Experiences with Multi-Touch Tables in the Arctic Exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium

• Main Authors: Uta Hinrichs, Sheelagh Carpendale
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: 5 Contents; Arctic; Heywood
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.224.9051; http://www.utahinrichs.de/uta/uploads/Publications/Publications/interactiveTablesInTheWild.pdf

This report describes and discusses the findings from a field study that was conducted at the Vancouver Aquarium to investigate how visitors explore and experience large horizontal multi-touch tables as part of public exhibition spaces. The study investigated visitors ’ use of two different tabletop applications—the Collection Viewer and the Arctic Choices table—that are part of the Canada’s Arctic exhibition at the Vancouver Aquarium. Our findings show that both tabletop exhibits enhanced the exhibition in different ways. The Collection Viewer table evoked visitors curiosity by presenting visually interesting information and engaged by supporting lightweight, playful, and open-ended information exploration. The Arctic Choices table enabled visitors to explore a variety of information about environmental and political changes within the Arctic in depth by providing detailed data visualizations. The application triggered a lot of insightful discussions among visitors. Our study findings include a discussion of the factors that attracted visitors ’ attention and triggered interaction with both tabletop exhibits, the character and duration of information exploration, general exploration strategies, and factors that triggered social and collaborative information exploration. We also discuss usability issues of both tabletop applications alongside possible solutions. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Vancouver Aquarium for allowing us to conduct our field study at the Canada’s Arctic exhibit. We, in particular, thank Jeff Heywood who greatly supported the preparation, setup, and realization of the study, as well as the staff of the Vancouver Aquarium who assisted us while we conducted the study on-site. We also thank all our participants who took part in our study and provided insightful comments. Last but not least we thank our funding