Upstream technologies are technologies which are not yet in widespread use but may become part of people’s everyday lives sooner or later. Thus, it makes sense to facilitate public discourse on their applications and engage prospective users in their design - if one can find them.

To involve the public in the design of novel projected user interfaces for tabletops developed in the VIGITIA project, we combined participatory design with pop-up science shops. Our pop-up participatory design approach engages a broad audience in ideation, user research, and outreach via an exhibition of functional prototypes in a highly-frequented location.

In two one-week exhibitions, have already discussed applications, technical details, and social and ethical issues with over 200 visitors. We gathered diverse viewpoints and a list of more than 60 use cases, of which only few had been mentioned previously.

Here are some impressions of 2020's and 2021's exhibition.

We describe our approach, the design choices made as well as its results and limitations in a paper currently under submission at DIS conference 2022.

You can download the pre-print here: pre-print_thanner_et_al_2022_popuppd.pdf