Authoring public display Web applications: guidelines, design patterns, and tool support

While public displays are being deployed in a massive manner in various contexts, the user interfaces of their applications often still suffer from poor usability. There is thus a need for structured support for designers and developers able to highlight the main aspects to consider in these cases and suggest possible design solutions. We report on the design and development of an authoring environment for non-interactive public display Web applications that supports some guidelines that we have developed, and on which we have elicited some empirical feedback. Based on such guidelines, several design patterns have been identified, supported by the tool, and applied to some example applications.