Facebook in the Physical World

This thesis investigates the idea of bringing an online social community into a public space. The concept is about building a bridge between an online social community and the physical world. We built a prototype public display to test the concept. The system was capable of displaying pictures of people who were standing in front of the system, pinpointing people’s hometowns on a map, and showing pictures that related to their interests. A one week test run of the system was carried out. We examined if this concept resulted people in getting to know each other better. The results support that this system led individuals to learn about each other. This thesis investigates the idea of bringing an online social community into a public space. The concept is about building a bridge between an online social community and the physical world. We built a prototype public display to test the concept. The system was capable of displaying pictures of people who were standing in front of the system, pinpointing people’s hometowns on a map, and showing pictures that related to their interests. A one week test run of the system was carried out. We examined if this concept resulted people in getting to know each other better. The results support that this system led individuals to learn about each other.