Designing with Ethnography: Tabletops and the Importance of their Physical Setup for Group Interactions in Exhibitions

Abstract

Designing interactive surfaces for walk-up-and-use scenarios in semi-public spaces like museums is a challenging task, since they need to be intuitive and appealing for a broad range of users. We describe the iterative development of two tabletop prototypes and their applications with a combination of interaction design and different types of ethnography. We outline the extensive development process and describe a user study with our second prototype, conducted in an exhibition about new media and digital cooperation for one week. Especially the physical setup of our tabletops distinguishes them from others. It consists of several seating elements to make interaction more comfortable for a heterogeneity of active users and onlookers. As an example for the analysis of the collected data we outline an interaction session of a group of 15 people. Results show that the artifact was well received and that groups and their interactions benefited from the physical setup.