Sandboxed interaction for casual users in shared spaces

A simple and natural interaction is considered the most important feature of an interface for multiple impromptu users in public spaces. Intuitiveness and forthright feedback are key factors to enable a steep learning curve for untrained users that need to grasp the interaction model in a short time span. The lack of proper constraints, designed to restrict and guide the user actions, might hinder such intuitiveness, mainly when the number of users grows or their behavior is exceedingly unrestrained. In this paper we introduce the idea of sandboxed interaction, a general concept that groups many flavors of physical and software-based measures aiming at guaranteeing a smooth and fitting interaction. To this end, we propose different types of sandboxes, suitable to handle different kind of interaction problems, and discuss a case study where several sandboxing measures have been put into use and evaluated within a real-world application scenario. © 2014 ACM.