PosterBoard
Group Members
- Manasi Vartak <mvartak@mit.edu>
- Tristan Naumann <tjn@mit.edu>
- Chidube Ezeozue <cezeozue@mit.edu>
Problem Statement
Event organizers want to effectively publicize their events with the least amount of effort. Traditionally, this involves putting up posters all over campus in hope of selecting locations along the daily path of their target audience. Although this approach has been tested by time, its efficacy is debatable. In a user study, we waited by a noticeboard for about an hour and only 4 of approximately 30 people passing the board Current poster boards (or bulletin boards) are static and have a low level of engagement with users, i.e., event goers. During a user study, we observed that over the period of an hour, only 4 students out of 30 passing a poster board in Stata actually glanced at it. Even worseFurthermore, only 1 stopped (for about 10 seconds) for further inspection. In addition to a low number of impressions, dissemination of event information through posters makes it difficult for organizers to estimate attendance.one of those four students (i.e. only 3.33% of the user population) stopped at the board for further inspection. The reason for lack of engagement with poster boards is three-fold: (1) the poster board is not interactive and hence has little use beyond the mere display of posters, (2) the lack of organization of posters makes it hard to find relevant information, and (3) even when a user finds a poster of interest, it is difficult to transfer the information from the poster into an electronic form. Similarly, currently there is little feedback event organizers can obtain just based on their posters. Unless there is an RSVP system, event organizers find it difficult to gauge interest for their event and estimate attendance.
To remedy these problems with current poster boards, our project has created an interactive PosterBoard based on touch technology that engages users by allowing them to interact with the poster (via likes/dislikes, the ability to scribble on posters etc), to instantly get information about interesting events, and to find relevant events by better organizing the posters at the board. We can also provide user engagement information to event-organizers through information like the like/dislike count, number of users who downloaded information about the event and statistics about the times users interacted with an event posterLikewise, event-goers (in this case, students) often wish they were alerted to events of interest. The ubiquity of the web and mobile phones makes them an obvious channel for advertising events (eg. events.mit.edu). However, students are unlikely to visit event websites for the primary reason of checking out the posters there, particularly when doing so requires sifting through a large number of events which are not relevant to their interests. Other channels (e.g. email) serve to draw attention to events, but often simply replicate a text-only version of the advertisement (with an occasionally attached flyer) and are easily dismissed by users who are attracted to posters by their visual design.