NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International Journal of Human–Computer Studies. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structuralformatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made tothis work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in the INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER STUDIES, [VOL 67, ISSUE 12, (Dec 2009)] DOI:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.07.006

Social Interaction around a Rural Community Photo Display

Nick Taylor, Keith Cheverst

Computing Department, Lancaster University, LA1 4WA, UK

Abstract

Public displays of photographs are a common sight in community spaces, yet while much attention has beengiven recently to the use of digital photography in the home, the community domain remains underexplored.We describe the Wray Photo Display, a public situated display for community-generated photography inan English rural village, which aims to understand the community’s use of photos for social purposes andthe ways in which public display technology may support these social interactions. This article presents thetechniques used in designing and evaluating the display as well as understanding the community and its useof photos, and our discussion of the issues and challenges presented by this study.

Keywords: Situated displays, Community, Participatory design

1. Introduction

In recent years the vastly increased availability,affordability and sophistication of technologies as-sociated with ubiquitous computing—large flat dis-plays, wireless networking, mobile devices etc.—hasenabled a proliferation of ubiquitous devices andapplications. In the domain of photography, thishas included the development of household digitalphoto frames that attempt to improve upon tra-ditional frame and print photo displays by allow-ing dynamic content or multimedia. However, lesswell explored is the use of photo displays outside ofthe home domain, in public areas and social spaceswhere photography might traditionally be displayedfor various purposes, which may overlap those pur-poses found in the home, but also differ. For exam-ple, displays of photos might play a role in instill-ing a sense of community through shared history orawareness of community events.

The overall aim of our work is to investigate therole that public displays of information can play ina rural community and the techniques that can beused in accessing communities to design these dis-plays. Our first prototype in this project has been acommunity photo display (Figure 1) in Wray, a ru-ral village in North West England, which has been

Email addresses: n.taylor@comp.lancs.ac.uk (NickTaylor), kc@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Keith Cheverst)

Figure 1: The Wray Photo Display

deployed since August 2006, displaying photos up-loaded by members of the community (Taylor et al.,2007). From this we have gained insights into theway this display and its photos have been used, theissues surrounding the deployment and the tech-niques we have used.

Our approach has been to employ a prolongedand iterative cycle of observing, designing, de-ploying, observing and so on, while maintainingthe close participation of village residents by us-ing a wide range of techniques to generate variousforms of feedback and data for informing the de-sign, including cultural probes (Gaver et al., 1999),

technology probes (Hutchinson et al., 2003), focusgroups and in-situ observations. Our prototype dis-play has not only been useful in assessing the use ofpublic displays in the community, but also in learn-ing about the community itself and its use of digitalcontent, in this case photos, within its social activ-ities. We have been able to observe the types ofphotos uploaded and their community-centric na-ture, the way they are categorised, the commentspeople make about them and the way people inter-act with each other around these photos.

In this article we explore the techniques we haveemployed to investigate the Wray community andthe potential for public, digital photo displays insupporting community activities and discuss ourfindings and observations of the display’s usagebased on over two years of continuous monitoringand development cycles. By doing this, we hopeto illustrate not just how the community has inter-acted with situated digital photo displays but alsothe role that photos themselves play in the commu-nity.

2. Background

Our work draws from a wide range of fields, in-cluding ubiquitous computing, computer supportedcooperative work (CSCW) and studies of commu-nity technologies and photo-related systems. Thissection introduces current relevant research in thesefields and the challenges that we believe indicate thepotential for public situated displays to play an in-creased role in communities and community photouse.

2.1. Photo Studies

The rapid shift towards digital photography overthe past decade has led to increased interest in thestudy of interaction and activities surrounding pho-tos, or ‘photowork’ (Kirk et al., 2006). In part,this appears to be because photo practices havenot evolved alongside photo technology itself: whileFrohlich et al. (2002) identified co-located sharingas the most common and enjoyable social practicerelated to photos, both for storytelling to those whowere not present when the photo was taken andreminiscing with those who were, this seems to bea task for which interactions around PC-based col-lections are particularly unsuitable, lacking the flex-ibility that paper photos afford so easily by beingpassed around, shared or casually reorganised. Al-though digital photos can be printed, the cost and

inconvenience involved makes this an imperfect so-lution.

In our own experience, it seems that these issuesare equally pertinent to collections of photos ownedby a community, such as displays of photos on apublic notice board or a publicly accessible photoalbum. While online galleries and photo sharingwebsites such as Flickr allow community collectionsto be generated with relative ease, these online gal-leries lack support for the social interactions thatmay occur around photos displayed on a public no-tice board, particularly the collocated storytellingand reminiscing activities.

Additionally, they may introduce accessibility is-sues, excluding those without Internet connectionsor with limited computer skills. Nevertheless, thereare other potential advantages offered by digitalphoto collections in communities: support for agreater number of images, a more democratic col-lection of photos, the ability to download copiesand the ability to leave comments to enter into adialogue with other community members.

2.2. Community Systems and Displays

Past research has speculated on the potentialuse of community ‘networks’ or ‘portals’ to sup-port communities and documented significant suc-cessful deployments that have helped communitiesto improve involvement and communication (Car-roll and Rosson, 1996; Colstad and Lipkin, 1975;Hampton and Wellman, 2003; Rogers et al., 1994;Schuler, 1994). Typically, these community systemsare web-based and we see many of the same issues,particularly inclusivity, which affect web-based col-lections of community photos. Our proposed solu-tion to the problems with both community photocollections and web-based community systems fo-cuses on the use of situated displays—digital dis-plays of information in public places that provide“opportunities for novel forms of communications,coordination and collaboration, and raise questionabout the emergence of social behaviours” (O’Haraet al., 2003).

The use of public displays in the context of com-munities has various benefits, including peripheralawareness of community activity, the inclusion ofthose who may not have web access or be entirelycomfortable with web technologies and the abil-ity to tailor a user interface for the functional-ity required, creating a simpler, more appliance-like experience (Bergman, 2000). While much of

the founding work with situated displays concen-trated almost exclusively on awareness and groupwork in workplace communities of practice (Grassoet al., 2003; Churchill et al., 2004), more recentwork has begun to extend outside of this domaininto local geographic communities (Churchill et al.,2006; Foth et al., 2006), including developing na-tions where web access is less pervasive (Jones et al.,2007; Maunder et al., 2007).

Central to the ‘situatedness’ of displays is the no-tion of ‘place’, which Harrison and Dourish (1996)define as “a space which is invested with under-standings of behavioural appropriateness, culturalexpectations, and so forth”. Thus ‘place’ encom-passes not only the physical aspects of the environ-ment and the constraints these impose on behaviour(such as community activity) but also what actionsand patterns of behaviour are expected there andthe particular routines that have developed thereover time, making it all the more important to takecare in understanding the community setting.

2.3. Studying and Designing with Communities

Designing for communities is a challenging taskand can be subject to complex sociotechnical issuesthat may be unique to individual communities. Assuch, ‘insider’ knowledge and an understanding ofthe community are critical when designing, yet thiscan be difficult to achieve where designers are con-sidered to be ‘outsiders’. Without proper consid-eration, this can lead to the development of sys-tems that are unsuitable for the community’s needsand ultimately go unused. For these reasons, wesupport the use of user-centred and participatorydesign techniques that prioritise the needs of usersand involve them in the design process. This ap-proach has been taken throughout our work withWray when developing the display, to gather feed-back from residents directly and ensure that thesystems we develop are of use to the community.This iterative approach is also inspired by participa-tory action research (Whyte, 1989), which involvesa community in a series of iterative improvementsthrough planning, action and results.

Our ability to learn about the community hasbenefited greatly from the use of probes—tools ex-tended into the community environment to col-lect data. The use of probes in HCI has be-come popular as a method of reaching domainsthat may be outside the scope of traditional tech-niques (Boehner et al., 2007), particularly where

long-term and intensive observations of the environ-ment are not feasible. The cultural probe (Gaveret al., 1999) was designed as a flexible techniqueinvolving a collection of open-ended materials de-signed to elicit ‘inspirational’ responses from par-ticipants; this may include scrapbooks and diaries,postcards to complete, or disposable cameras tocapture thoughts. The technology probe approach(Hutchinson et al., 2003) built upon this conceptby introducing technology-based interventions intothe environment. This typically involves the de-ployment of a functional but simple and adaptable‘seed’ technology, with the goals of exploring theenvironment and users’ needs, field testing the tech-nology and generating new ideas from researchersand users.

3. The Photo Display Study

Located 15km from the city of Lancaster inNorth West England, Wray has a population ofapproximately five hundred people and contains anumber of public social spaces, including a villagehall, post-office and local pubs. It has a friendlyand vibrant community with a reputation for en-couraging participation, which runs various annualevents including a Scarecrow Festival, village fairand produce show. Although the village has alarge elderly population, it has embraced technol-ogy wholeheartedly—the community has freely ac-cessible computers, formerly hosted in a local puband now in the village hall, which holds a weeklyComputer Club. A wireless mesh network was in-stalled across the village as part of another univer-sity project, providing fast Internet access wherepreviously only dial-up connections were available.For these reasons, Wray presented an excellent testsite for situated display deployments in terms of in-frastructure, contacts and goodwill.

3.1. Investigating the Community

Our approach throughout the project has beenentirely user-centric and participatory, openinglines of communication between residents and re-searchers to allow discussion, feedback and demon-stration of ideas. We see involvement of this kindas being vital to the success of community systemswhere complex sociotechnical issues must be takeninto account. To achieve this, we have used an it-erative approach of observing the environment, dis-cussing our observations with residents, designing

Figure 2: The development cycle.

and deploying a prototype, observing and so on(Figure 2). This involvement with the communityhas been enabled by our main contact in the vil-lage, a local technology enthusiast and communityvolunteer, who has acted as an access point (Mars-den et al., 2008) with knowledge of both technologyand local needs.

The first stage of observations was vital to gainsome understanding of the study environment priorto attempting to design any technological interven-tion. In March 2006, contact was established withthe village community and researchers embarkedon a brief investigation of Wray in an attempt tounderstand how public displays might benefit thecommunity. We began by conducting a small num-ber of site visits to the village in order to famil-iarise ourselves with the deployment domain, in-volving taking pictures of locations that seemed tohave relevance to notions of community and pub-licly displayed information and attendance at theannual village fair. A cultural probe pack (Gaveret al., 1999) was developed and handed out to mem-bers of the village Computer Club, aimed at identi-fying the ways information was currently displayedin the village and the social spaces critical to thecommunity.

Inspired by the various photos displayed in com-munity spaces such as the pub and village hall (Fig-ure 3), especially historical photos that seemed tosupport the community’s sense of history, we sug-gested a simple photo display deployment withinthe village, which would act as a technology probeto further our understanding of the community andthe role a situated display might play. The WrayPhoto Display technology was deployed in the vil-lage hall in August 2006, and later the village postoffice, consisting of a touch screen display attached

Figure 3: Historical photos displayed in Wray.

to a small PC that displayed thumbnails of pho-tographs uploaded using a web application. Thedisplay itself directly collects data from the com-munity through analysis of both usage logs and thephotos themselves, the ways they are categorisedand the comments posted on them.

In addition to data collected directly from thePhoto Display, we have also received large amountsof feedback from users. A paper notebook has beenleft beside the display for the entirety of the projectas a ‘comments book’, in which residents and vis-itors could leave their thoughts and feedback re-garding the system (Figure 4) and we have heldmeetings with groups of residents in May 2007 andFebruary 2008, each attended by half a dozen res-idents, where we discussed issues with the displayand possible future additions.

Finally, we have a duplicate display that can bedeployed at community events. This has the ad-vantage of making the display visible to a greaternumber of residents and visitors, as well as allowingresearchers to observe interaction with the display,discuss display issues with residents and take partin community events. To date, the duplicate dis-play has been installed at annual produce shows inAugust 2006 and 2007 and the annual Wray Fair inMay 2007 and 2008. We have found these eventsto be an excellent way of meeting regular displaycontributors, many of whom are active at com-munity events but may not attend arranged meet-ings to discuss the project. Often, the display actsas a talking point to drive discussion between re-searchers and community members by providing aconcrete example of situated display technologies.

Figure 4: Comment book entries.

3.2. Prototype Description

The use of a functioning prototype to probethe community has been central to our work inWray. When initially deployed in August 2006,this was simply a repurposed prototype that hadpreviously shown potential for community interac-tions in a workplace environment (Cheverst et al.,2005). This offered limited functionality: a touchscreen display connected to a concealed computer,displaying ten thumbnails at a time, with controlsto progress backwards and forwards through theimage collection. A basic web interface was pro-vided for a designated administrator to upload pho-tos, but it was generally intended that users wouldupload and download photos using Bluetooth mo-bile phones. This was deployed in the village hall,which we identified with participants as a centralsocial space in the village that already housed no-tice boards and photographs, as well as the Com-puter Club.

During the first month of deployment, function-ality was rapidly upgraded based on initial feedbackfrom community members. For example, the abil-ity to select a single image and view it at a largersize was added in response to an elderly residentwho could not see the thumbnails clearly enoughto identify herself and the web interface was madepublicly available after the Bluetooth functional-ity went unused. As the quantity and variety ofcontent increased, we also provided categories thatcould be created by individual users, allowing thecommunity to organise the photos. Due to plans torenovate part of the building, our contact decided tomove the display to the village post office, where itgained considerably more exposure due to the verypublic and accessible nature of the location.

Figure 5: Screenshots showing the gallery interface and asingle image view.

After a year of deployment we began consideringfurther upgrades based on the feedback and log datagathered. Foremost amongst these was the abilityto comment on photographs using both the displayand website and to browse photos using the web in-terface. This was coupled with a complete redesignof the display interface (Figure 5) and website to in-crease usability and the addition of subcategories tosuit the further increasing number of photos. Mostrecently, the ability to send photos from the displayas ‘digital postcards’ (Taylor and Cheverst, 2008)has been deployed based on a suggestion from aresident.

4. Overview of Feedback and Usage

Results from the probe have largely been quali-tative observations and feedback received from res-idents through the comments book, at communityevents attended by researchers and at organisedmeetings, although data has also been collected inthe form of log data showing display interaction andthe contents of the display itself, including images,categories and comments. We have resisted thetemptation to install a webcam with the displayfor continuous observation, recalling residents’ pastprivacy concerns and fearing that this might dis-courage interaction, although CCTV cameras arealready installed in the post office. Likewise, wehave refrained from observing users in the post of-fice itself, where our presence would be conspicuousand potentially deter interaction altogether.

4.1. Feedback

Feedback in general has been extremely positiveand residents have particularly praised the poten-tial of the display to help their community and theability to view historical photographs. As of Au-gust 2008, approximately 70 comments have been

written in the comments book, with additional feed-back being received by email via our contact inthe village and through interaction with residentsat community events. While around half of thesewere general positive comments, residents quicklybegan to suggest possible content and features forthe display. Early comments requested that his-torical photos of the village be uploaded (“it wouldalso be good to see some of the older photos of daysgone by”, “please could we see some old photos ofhow the village used to look?”, “would be great tosee some of the historical pictures of the village”),leading to the addition of an old photos category;this has been by far the most well-received addi-tion to the display, with one resident writing thatthe display was “a great way of recording a livinghistory of Wray”.

Several community members have commentedthat the display allowed them to see photos of anevent that they missed, allowing some feeling of par-ticipation (“I missed the last couple of days of theScarecrow Festival and this gives me the opportu-nity to see some of the activities and scarecrowsI missed”). This support for those absent fromthe village extends to former residents and thosewith historical ties to the village have discoveredthe display either through the web or while visitingWray. In one reported case, a pair of adult visitorswho used to holiday in the village as children foundphotos of their mother as a child while she herselfwas visiting and website users from as far away asCanada have regained contact with the community.

Many residents have expressed the belief that thedisplay might be also helpful for visitors and newresidents moving into the village, giving an impres-sion of the village’s history and important com-munity events. One email summed up the com-munity’s response particularly well: “The digitalnoticeboard has many advantages for the village.There are quite a few new people in the village andthis gives them an insight as to what Wray used tolook like [. . . ] The flood photos are one way the oldand newer village can be seen. Also the photos ofthe previous villagers [. . . ] are invaluable in the his-tory of Wray. It also gives information of importantevents in the village”. In this we see many of thekey elements of communities described by Mynattet al. (1998): the notion of change or evolution ina community is evoked by the popularity of histor-ical photos, while the popular sentiment that thedisplay might help to integrate new members intothe community suggests the existence of boundaries

Figure 6: Images views per month.

and relationships defining membership of the com-munity after losing touch.

4.2. Log Data and Display Contents

Our primary metric for usage of the display hasbeen image views, defined as a user touching animage thumbnail to display a large sized image.Logs captured across a period of exactly two yearsfrom August 31st 2006 onwards show 12,391 im-ages views have occurred, a rate of around 17 perday (sd. 16.88). However, as image thumbnailsare reasonably clear, some users may browse thedisplay without viewing an image full size. Logsshow some 39,238 browse events where the user hastouched a scroll button, averaging around 54 a day(sd. 52.19). Considerable viewing and browsingis taking place, but as evidenced by the standarddeviations, actual usage varies greatly from day today. This is corroborated by log data showing thatimage views and browse events often occur in spo-radic bursts, where an individual or group uses thedisplay for a prolonged period. Furthermore, us-age has been impacted by both location and localevents: Figure 6 shows image views broken downby month and activity can been seen to peak inNovember 2006 when the display was relocated tothe more visible location in the post office, withsmaller spikes occurring in May when the villagereceives a large number of visitors for the Scare-crow Festival and Wray Fair.

At the time of writing, 1,009 images have beenuploaded by the community, equivalent to around1.4 per day (sd. 2.48). Like other forms of activity,most of the images were uploaded in large batchesand Figure 7 again shows clear spikes surroundingmajor community events such as the Produce Show

Figure 7: Images uploads per month.

(August) and Scarecrow Festival (April/May). Im-ages have been uploaded by a relatively small num-ber of users who take particular interest in thedisplay. Early versions of the system did not at-tribute photos to the users who uploaded them,but the remaining 432 images were uploaded byjust eight users, the vast majority of these by ourmain contact in the village, who contributed 356images, while contributions from other users var-ied between one and 19 photos. Although a largernumber of contributors had perhaps been antici-pated, this seems to conform to the 90-9-1 princi-ple (Nielsen, 2006), which stipulates that only 1%of online community users will contribute regularly,9% will contribute intermittently and the remainderwill ‘lurk’, consuming content without contribut-ing. With 79 registered web users (and additionalanonymous display users), our results map comfort-ably onto this ratio.

In addition to actual photographs uploaded, dataassociated with the photos—specifically the wayphotos are categorised by the community and com-ments posted by users—are also a valuable sourceof data about the community and reveal insightsinto the use of photos in the village. As the screenlayout limits the number of displayable ‘top level’categories to nine, the choice of these categories andtheir relative popularity can, in part, be used toinfer that elements of community life are impor-tant to the users. Table 1 shows how village eventsand historical photographs account for the major-ity of photos uploaded to the display and that the‘Scarecrows’ category, containing images of the an-nual Scarecrow Festival, accounts for over a thirdof the images—this in particular speaks volumesabout the importance of this event to the commu-

Category Name Total Images Subcategories

Scarecrows 359 3Village Events 281 6Old Photos 190 0Current Photos 91 3Funny Videos and Photos 37 0Wray Flood 35 0Sticky Fingers Craft Workshop 11 0

Table 1: Categories created for the display.

nity and the visual nature of the event.Of 169 comments, 140 were posted from the

Photo Display itself using the onscreen keyboard,reflecting the type of lightweight, casual interac-tion that this feature was intended to encourage. Inthe interest of simplifying use of the display, post-ing a comment did not require user attribution, soit is unfortunately not possible to tell how manyindividuals posted these comments. An additionalseven users contributed the remaining 29 commentsthrough the website, again typically in batches ofseveral comments in a short period. Most of thesecomments are used to describe the content of thephotos, particularly historical photos, often provid-ing a list of names of those appearing in the image.Often this is left by the image’s owner to act as acaption, but this is not always the case—some ofthese identifying comments are posted by a seconduser, where the original poster either does not havethe information themselves or has not posted it.

5. Interaction around Community Photos

Through our investigation of the community andexploratory prototypes, we have elicited several in-sights into the ways the community uses photos.These include the role photos play in recording com-munity history, sharing recent events and news, andintegrating new members into the community. Theobservation of behaviour around the display hasalso been enlightening, both in helping us designmore effective and usable displays, and in demon-strating how pairs or groups of individuals browseand discuss content together. This section will sum-marise our observations regarding usage of the dis-play, its functionality and the role that photos servein community interactions.

5.1. Interaction with the Display

While observing the display in use at communityevents, we often saw individual users spending long

periods of time browsing through the display andlooking at many individual photos. Frequently, twoor more participants would become heavily engagedin using the display, particularly when discussinghistorical photos. One observed interaction sawa new resident and a local history enthusiast dis-cussing the history of the newcomer’s house, whileanother saw three generations of the same familygathered around the display finding photos of rel-atives. These strongly correspond to the primaryways in which photos are used in the home, forstorytelling and reminiscing with others (Frohlichet al., 2002). Despite the generally positive atti-tude towards the display, visitors at the Wray Fairdeployments often appeared reticent over approach-ing the display and needed encouraging to interact,possibly indicating an element of social embarrass-ment (Brignull and Rogers, 2003). Unfortunatelygiven the significance of physical placement on sit-uated displays, it is difficult to infer to what extentthis behaviour might be replicated around the usualdeployment location.

Churchill et al. (2003b) identified common place-ments for notice boards, typically including placeswhere people will wait, where they go to obtain in-formation, or where they pass regularly, and whilethe post office may be visited regularly, some resi-dents have described their transactions as “in andout”, with little time to notice the display and anywaiting occurring in queues away from the display.Although the original village hall location did oc-casionally see use as a waiting room for a visitingdoctor, this did not expose a large number of resi-dents to the display. Other locations suggested inthe comments book have included one of the villagepubs, or a small caf in the village, which might beconsidered to be more social spaces, but that maynot be frequented by such a large proportion of thevillage’s population.

5.2. Collocated vs. Remote Interaction

Due to the situated nature of the Photo Display,we consider most community interaction around thedisplay to be ‘collocated’ spatially, if not alwaystemporally—two users may interact with photos to-gether at the public display at the same time or theymight interact across time by leaving comments.Remote interaction is also supported through thedisplay’s website. Figure 8 shows various forms ofinteraction with the system on a time-space matrix,categorised as either collocated or remote, and syn-chronous or asynchronous (Rodden, 1991).

Figure 8: Time-Space matrix of Photo Display interactions.

There is a considerable difference in perceptionbetween collocated and remote access to photos bythose outside the community. Although residentsfrequently requested that the web application beextended to allow browsing, some residents wereconcerned about ‘outsiders’ being able to see thecontent, particularly photos of children, due to thepotential for misuse of such images. The solutionhas been to allow content authors to tag photos as‘private’, meaning they appear only on the publicdisplay and cannot be downloaded—29 images ofchildren have been tagged this way since the featurewas introduced in August 2007.

Remote and asynchronous interaction also in-troduces the necessity of moderation, due to con-cerns from residents regarding inappropriate con-tent and our own concerns about the damage thismight cause to the project and relations with thecommunity. However, the choice of pre-moderation(content must be approved before becoming visi-ble) or post-moderation (content is posted immedi-ately and removed if reported as offensive) alwayspresents a trade-off between the time taken for con-tent to appear and the likelihood of inappropriatecontent being seen. Due to the highly visible natureof photos on the display, pre-moderation was se-lected. When commenting functionality was added,comments were initially unmoderated until severalunsuitable messages led to post-moderation beingimplemented. To date, only one complaint has beenreceived, regarding a scarecrow at the annual villagefair that was deemed unsuitable and removed by aresident, but that had already been photographedand later appeared on the Photo Display. The of-

fended resident complained verbally to our contact,who promptly removed the photo. While it is in-teresting that the display formed a seamless part ofa minor drama of village life, it also highlights theproblems that differences in opinion can present tocontent moderation.

5.3. Photos in Communities

Photos play an important part in recording thehistory of communities and yet, while large collec-tions of historical images and newspaper clippingsappear to exist in private collections in Wray, onlya small number of these that are displayed in thevillage hall and local pub are publicly available.Likewise, individuals may amass a large numberof photos of contemporary community events thatare never shared outside a small number of friendsand family members. The addition of the PhotoDisplay to the community provided a prompt forresidents possessing these collections to make thempublic, which they appear to have done enthusias-tically. Although existing online photo album ser-vices could certainly have provided a solution tothese issues, these are not without their own prob-lems (see section 2.1) and no such usage appearedto exist prior to the Photo Display’s deployment.Perhaps it is the very public nature of the displayand its salience, visible to residents during the day-to-day lives, which invites use, where online albumsmay be hidden from view.

We see photos of recent community events to belinked with notions of awareness, or “understand-ing of the activities of others, which provides acontext for your own activity” (Dourish and Bel-lotti, 1992). Originating in CSCW disciplines, thisis often referred to in task-oriented terms related toworkplaces and group work, but it seems to us thatknowledge of current local events is an importantpart of community ‘membership’, and several com-ments received from residents regarding the abilityto see events they missed have reflected this. Byproviding more distributed forms of photo interac-tion, the Photo Display expands this awareness, al-lowing community members to ‘participate’ in com-munity events and share the sense of communityspirit, despite being physically or temporally sepa-rated from the event itself.

6. Challenges and Issues

As we stated as the start of this article, it is clearthat communities present their own unique chal-

lenges that need to be considered when developingtechnology for use in a particular community envi-ronment. Although we believe our approach to thisissue has been successful on the whole, some issuesremain, such as difficulties in assessing the impactof a deployment on a complex environment, prob-lems encouraging participation and concerns thatour system is not yet as inclusive as we would hope.

6.1. Difficulties in Evaluation

Determining the effects of a technological inter-vention upon a community is a particular challenge,given the complexity of communities and the manyvariables that affect them (Cheverst et al., 2008).Although the success of the system can be mea-sured to a certain extent by the amount of usageand analysis of the content generated, this does notrepresent the entire effect of a community systemand ignores the wider impact that the system isintended to have. There may be appropriate met-rics that could be considered in the future; for ex-ample, Chavis et al. (1986) provide the Sense ofCommunity Index, while Hampton and Wellman(2003) used a variety of interesting metrics to mea-sure the effect of technology on community involve-ment, such as the number of residents recognisedand their average distance from each other.

The sporadic nature of our observations has alsoposed a challenge while evaluating. Although ourlogs show all button presses on the display, thisleaves much to be desired when attempting to ex-amine social interactions; we would wish to identifydistinct users, identify users who looked at the dis-play but did not interact, know how many peopleare stood at the display etc.

6.2. Working with Communities

Although the close participation of the Wraycommunity during the design process is one of themain strengths of our methodology, it has also beenthe source of frustrations. We have often felt thatparticipants are reluctant to share their ideas; inan email, one a resident suggested an excellent idearegarding digital postcards but worried, only half-jokingly, about “hoots of laughter” that her ideamight receive. Our contact in the community ex-pressed a similar sentiment: “the hardest bit is get-ting them to open their mouths at the right timeand share their thoughts [. . . ] they always thinkthat nobody cares or is interested in them [. . . ] asthey are not clever or so they think”. This has led

us to wonder whether this is a rural attitude, or onecaused by the perceived difference between the par-ticipants and “clever” researchers that might affectparticipatory design in general.

The use of prototypes with the community hasproved both beneficial and problematic. On theone hand, it has been important to manage expec-tations and make sure the users understood thatour approach required a simple but reliable systemand so could not include all the functionality theymight desire. We knew that the display must bereliable to maintain the trust relationship that wewere starting to build with the community. Con-versely, the use of prototypes has provided concreteexamples of community displays that enabled par-ticipants to better imagine the possibilities of suchtechnologies, as well as exposing them to variousissues and challenges they might present.

6.3. Inclusion Challenges

While a stated advantage of a digital display isits ability to bring digital content to those withoutcomputers or Internet connections, the technologymay still pose a barrier to use for these residents,given that their computer skills are likely to be lim-ited. Although the public display itself requires lit-tle skill to operate, the use of web applications tocontrol the display’s content may cause a problemfor such residents—in the past we have found thatsome participants are not comfortable with typicalweb application features. It is important that theseusers can take full advantage of the system’s fea-tures and we are currently considering alternativeapproaches to accommodate users who may strug-gle in this respect. In addition to those who may beunable to use the technology, there may be residentswho may simply be unaware of, disinterested in oreven hostile towards the appearance of technologyin the community. How to engage these membersof the community continues to be a challenge.

The system must also not favour those who arealready closely tied to the village. To date, workin Wray has been most focused upon members ofthe Computer Club who were willing participantsand easily reached through our links in the com-munity, although attendance at community eventsgreatly widened the number of variety of partic-ipants. However, consideration must be given tohow representative of the wider community thissample is and consider what other groups exist, howthey interact with the rest of community and howthey can become more involved in the project.

7. Future Work and Conclusions

In this article, we have described our work withpublic digital photo display deployment in a smallrural community. From this study, we have gainedinsights into the role photographs play in the com-munity, the potential for situated displays to sup-port these interactions, the challenges faced by suchdeployments and the methods we can use in gain-ing access to the community and designing for theirneeds. Although we acknowledge that our observa-tions have taken place within a single community,limiting the extent to which they can be gener-alised, our study contributes an initial investigationinto the community setting, including techniquesthat might be used in future investigations to vali-date observations.

As evidenced by the large number of photographsdisplayed on existing village noticeboards, they playan important role in the community. While wehave seen that the use of photos in the commu-nity often overlaps with home usage, particularlyin terms of reminiscing and storytelling, they alsoact as a source of awareness of recent events andimportant community history, especially for thosewho have left the community. To a certain extent,this may be considered equivalent to sharing pho-tos with remote friends and family, another popularphoto activity identified by Frohlich et al. (2002).A final and perhaps unique usage of photos in com-munities arises from the integration of new mem-bers, through the use of photos to ‘learn the ropes’and identify important aspects of life in the vil-lage. Current forms of community photo collection,such as an online gallery, are perhaps unsuitable forthese tasks; in addition to excluding segments ofthe community who might not have access to theInternet or a home PC, knowledge of their existencemay be poor even amongst those with access. Bycomparison, the Wray Photo Display offers the ad-vantages of both existing public displays of paperphotographs and web-based collections. Althoughthe collection can be viewed on the Internet anddigital photos easily contributed this way, commu-nity members can also interact with a simple userinterface in a public place that is frequently visitedby many residents.

It is important to note that the design of the dis-play was only successful due to the continual inputfrom members of the community. We have foundour approach of a prototype deployment coupledwith iterative, participatory design to be highly suc-

cessful in generating feedback from users, allowinggradual evolution of the system for the benefit ofthe community. From a relatively simplistic initialprototype, residents’ feedback and observations ofuse have led to the development of a successful andfully featured prototype system. This approach hasbeen especially useful in providing a concrete exam-ple of a situated display system and allowing usersto experience real usage, enabling us to enter intomore meaningful and detailed dialogue with partic-ipants.

Our main remaining goal with the Photo Dis-play is to address inclusivity, particularly the chal-lenge of transferring content onto the display. Theneed for digital copies of photos and the web-basedupload method both present boundaries for non-technical users, running contrary to the stated aimof improving access to community materials. Un-fortunately alternatives seem limited, and it maybe necessary to consider an entirely non-technicalsolution to overcome this problem. In the past, forexample, our contact in the village has scanned anduploaded photos for those who were unable to doso themselves. We intend to continue working withthe community in Wray towards our goal of under-standing the role that public situated displays canplay within the community and assessing the suit-ability of our techniques. Based on our first proto-type deployments, we believe considerable potentialexists in both these respects.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by a Microsoft ResearchEuropean PhD scholarship and originated as partof the EPSRC funded CASIDE project (grant ref:EP/C005589), which ended in August 2008. Wewould also like to thank Chris Conder and the con-tinually helpful and enthusiastic residents of Wray

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