Assessing the impact of interactivity on recall and recognition

Abstract

The urban landscape is nowadays increasingly permeated with public displays. It is not only large outdoor advertisers that deploy them, but also smaller retailers set up displays in their shop windows. Advertising is currently the prevailing business model but the mere adaptation of traditional content (static text, images, or movies) makes displays hardly attractive to the passer-by. Consequently, new forms of more entertaining and engaging content is being developed and deployed, such as interactive games that promise a great user experience and are more likely to grasp a user's attention. However, it still remains a questionable challenge how advertisers can benefit from such content despite the increasing number of passers by starting to interact. This thesis aims at understanding the effects that are caused by novel, interactive public display applications. This entails more specific questions such as whether people can better memorize the content on the screen if they interacted with it. Memorizing is measured by recall and recognition. Understanding the effect on recall and recognition would be of high interest to the advertiser as this could be a valuable measure for the success of future public display applications in combination with the advertising realm.