INTERACTIVE DIGITAL SIGNAGE USING KINECT AND ITS EXPERIMENTAL USE

Nowadays, Digital Signage (DS) for delivering information through a computer display installed in a public space is becoming widespread. DS is often used in educational facilities such as universities. We launched an educational DS project called "Niche-Learning", which aimed at delivering learning materials through DS on university campus.

Niche-Learning System (NLS) presents digital slides and videos on a large-size computer display installed in a public space (e.g., entrance hall and lounge) according to a delivery time schedule. Through this project, an unspecified number of students can learn informally by viewing the learning materials. However, many students did not pay attention to the DS―they did not view the delivered learning materials.

We thought that this unexpected situation was caused by the unilateral learning material delivery. To increase viewer students, hence, we focused on interactivity in DS.

Therefore, we developed the Interactive Niche-Learning System (INLS), which superimposes viewers on a digital slide-based quiz and enables them to answer the quiz by changing their place on the superimposed image. In this study, we simplified the INLS to install it in an educational facility. The simplified INLS adopted the Kinect to realize the answer judgment by skeleton detection (and tracking), taking account of the display’s size and the computer’s performance. Compared with the NLS (the unilateral learning material delivery), the INLS made more students view the delivered learning materials. The simplified INLS was installed in Tokushima Prefectural Disaster Prevention Center and experimentally used at an educational event called “Disaster Prevention Festival Tokushima 2013”. Visitors to the facility answered a simple questionnaire about the simplified INLS. The questionnaire results were basically favorable.