They are looking at me!: understanding how audience presence impacts on public display users

It is well known from prior work, that people interacting as well as attending to a public display attract further people to interact. This behavior is commonly referred to as the honeypot effect. At the same time, there are often situations where an audience is present in the vicinity of a public display that does not actively engage or pay attention to the display or an approaching user. However, it is largely unknown how such a passive audience impacts on users or people who intend to interact. In this paper, we investigate the influence of a passive audience on the engagement of people with a public display. In more detail, we report on the deployment of a display in a public space. We collected and analyzed video logs to understand how people react to passive audience in the vicinity of public displays. We found an influence on where interacting users position themselves relative to both display and passive audience as well as on their behavior. Our findings are valuable for display providers and space owners who want to maximize the display's benefits.