BBCast: Intuitive design and utility of a cloud based bulletin board
Miguel Luis Ting, Jan Franz Palngipang, Rowel Atienza · 2016
As digital displays become more ubiquitous, we find ways to make them cheaper, lighter, more interactive and easy to use and deploy. Our past project BBCast, aimed to achieve these by utilizing the cloud as a repository using Chromecast and creating a controller application in the widespread platform Android. However, the project failed to fully address the problem plaguing most technology which is poor design. Most of technologies are designed by engineers with little to no regard for user experience and product design usually focusing only on functionality. Interactive pervasive displays like other technologies, achieve their intended purpose when a lot of people use them. Bad design discourages user adoption. This paper aims to resolve this problem by redesigning the BBCast project with a proper user experience and user interface. Guidelines in designing were taken from academic papers, online resources and trends by companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft. To properly asses the design quantitatively and qualitatively, methods from the Nielsen Norman group were adopted. The system was tested for stability which is a part of usability. To further possible adoption of the technology, other uses for the system were explored in this paper. Aside from deployment and on site testing in an academic institution, a modified version ran as part of a public Twitter stream display in a university lantern parade.