FunSquare and Digifieds at UbiChallenge 2011

The UbiChallenge

The UBIChallenge competition in Oulu, Finland will take place from June until August 2011. This competition is oriented towards creating, distributing, (June 2011) and examining (July, August 2011) public display applications in a real world setting, i.e., on eleven public displays in the city of Oulu. Our proposals for the ’Funsquare’ and ‘Digifieds’ systems were accepted.

FunSquare

The Funsquare application leverages the existing UBI Challenge deployment to generate locally relevant, easy-to-generate “fun facts” that not only educate and entertain citizens, but also improve social interaction between strangers and friends alike. It offers a sustainable business model through “funmercial” (sponsored “fun facts”), as well as minimal overhead in terms of administration and implementation.

Digifieds

Despite the advent of the Internet traditional paper-­‐based notice areas are still very popular due to their easy usage and high potential to reach a local community. However, they did not yet enter the digital domain due to the lack of easy means for creating and taking away content and as suitable display technologies are still costly (touch, vandalism proof). We take a first step towards establishing public displays as a communication medium of the future by exploring suitable interaction techniques (touch, mobile phone, web) for creating and taking away user‐generated content.