What's in it for me: Exploring the real-world value proposition of pervasive displays

The future of pervasive public display networks is loaded with high expectations. Non-commercial displays are commonly envisaged as proliferating in numerous contexts and domains, where they offer various uses for a variety of everyday users. In this paper we discuss why this vision is perhaps over optimistic and the realities of deploying, designing and understanding such systems should not be taken for granted. Understanding the value of public display deployments in respect to location managers, and the real-world costs of longitudinal in-the-wild deployments are both commonly overlooked in much of the related literature. Within this paper we develop a discussion in reference to several real-life events by presenting examples from the past five years of running the open UBI Oulu initiative in Oulu, in northern Finland. The purpose of this research is to raise awareness about these aspects of in-the-wild display deployments and to be support the research community in creating sustainable public display deployments. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m [information interfaces and presentation]: Miscellaneous General Terms Design, economics, human factors.