Design and implementation of a new run-time life-cycle for interactive public display applications

Public display systems are becoming increasingly complex. They are moving from passive closed systems to open interactive systems that are able to accommodate applications from several independent sources. This shift needs to be accompanied by a more flexible and powerful application management. In this paper, we propose a run-time life-cycle model for interactive public display applications that addresses several shortcomings of current display systems. Our model allows applications to load their resources before they are displayed, enables the system to quickly pause and resume applications, provides strategies for applications to transition and terminate gracefully by requesting additional time to finish the presentation of content, allows applications to save their state before being destroyed and gives applications the opportunity to request and relinquish display time. We have implemented our model as a Google Chrome extension that allows any computer with the Google Chrome browser to become a public display driver without further software. In this paper we present our model, implementation, and evaluation of the system.