ORIGINAL ARTICLE

When noise becomes voice: designing interactive technologyfor crowd experiences through imitation and invention

Rune Veerasawmy • John McCarthy

Received: 18 May 2013 / Accepted: 29 October 2013

� Springer-Verlag London 2014

Abstract In this paper, we present crowd experience as a

novel concept when designing interactive technology for

spectator crowds in public settings. Technology-mediated

experiences in groups have already been given serious

attention in the field of interaction design. However, crowd

experiences are distinctive because of the spontaneous,

uninhibited behavior exhibited. In crowds, extreme soci-

ality and the experience of performing identity in public

emerge spontaneously. By bridging crowd theory and

pragmatics of experience, we establish an understanding of

crowd experience as a distinct sociality within interaction

design that unfolds through imitation and invention. We

deploy that understanding in an exploration of spectator

experiences at three football matches in which an experi-

mental prototype, BannerBattle, was deployed. Banner-

Battle is an interactive banner on which spectators can grab

space in competition with their rivals. The more noise and

movement they make, the more screen real estate they

gain. BannerBattle therefore enabled us to explore the

emergence of imitative and at times inventive behavior in

enriched crowd experience, by augmenting and supporting

spectator performance in this way. We discuss the value of

a conceptual understanding of crowd experience for tech-

nology as an unexplored potential for designing new

interactive technology at spectator venues.

Keywords Crowd experience � Technology-supported

spectator experiences � User experience design �Sporting events

1 Introduction

Social interaction and social experience have received

significant attention during the last couple of decades

within the field of HCI. A great deal of this attention has

been given to supporting collaboration in fairly settled

group and organizational settings [e.g., 1–3], engagements

between people in established communities [e.g., 4], and in

facilitating relationships between people who already know

each other very well [e.g., 5, 6]. More recently, as part of a

general shift toward exploring novel interactional settings

[7], attention has turned to the use of technology to support

public performances and spectacles, often involving

members of the public who do not know each other well,

in situations that are not very familiar to them. For

example, HCI has explored interaction in pervasive gaming

in city streets [8], in museums and galleries [9], clubs [10],

and among familiar strangers waiting for trains on public

platforms [11]. Even more recently, crowds have become a

new focus for studies of social interaction and experience

with technology in projects ranging from crowd sourcing

and crowd funding [e.g., 12–14] to the design of technol-

ogies to support convivial crowds [7]. As Reeves et al. [7]

have suggested, crowds are interesting because participa-

tion is not necessarily mediated by a particular spectacle

and because of the variety of relationships that are enacted

between participants.

Our aim in this paper is to open up another aspect of

participation in crowds—the carnivalistic spontaneity

of some crowd experiences—and to explore implications

R. Veerasawmy (&)

Department of Aesthetics and Communication, PIT and CAVI,

Aarhus University, Arhus, Denmark

e-mail: runevn@cavi.au.dk

J. McCarthy

Department of Applied Psychology, University College Cork,

Cork, Ireland

e-mail: john.mccarthy@ucc.ie

123

Pers Ubiquit Comput

DOI 10.1007/s00779-014-0761-8

of designing for those aspects of crowd experience. We

hope to show by appeal to social scientific literature and to

a design experiment that this is a distinct focus from ana-

lytic and design perspectives. The source of the distinc-

tiveness is in taking participant experience in crowds as a

starting point, an approach that HCI has been prepared for

by the emergence of an experience-centered approach to

design in the last decade [15, 16].

During the last decade, the potential of designing for

experience, and supporting the meaningful experiences

people have with technology, has been realized in inter-

action design and HCI (see e.g., [15, 17–20]). In this

context, experience has been addressed as a holistic,

pragmatic, cultural and critical process of sense making

and meaning creation [15, 16] that occurs in the open

relationship between a socio-cultural context, individuals

bodily and intellectual engagement, and interaction with

the technological object [17].

When talking about experience, there is a danger of

imagining a subjective response that is somehow detached

from the social worlds in which we live. Building on

Dewey’s [21] philosophy, experience-centered design has

largely adopted a pragmatist perspective in which experi-

ence is embedded in the activities that people engage in

and the social world in which we live. Dewey’s pragmatist

philosophy argues against the idea that thoughts, ideas, and

emotions could exist separate from our bodies and the

activities we engage in, and separate from each other. The

pragmatist perspective cannot imagine a person experi-

encing separate from the object of the experience, or from

the context and history that situates it. Dewey’s pragmatist

perspective on experience has influenced a number of areas

of interaction design including the focus on the quality of

experience of design [15, 16, 22] and the emergence of

experience-oriented interaction models [19].

Continuing in the spirit of this appropriation of prag-

matist perspectives on experience in interaction design, our

emphasis in the current project sees experience as ineluc-

tably social, whether we stand alone or in a crowd [16].

The complex performative interplay between what may be

considered subjective and social in experience is clear for

all to see in people’s use of social media to express and

share their feelings at a concert as they text, tweet, and

send images to friends during the concert. Through the use

of social media, and more generally through the iterative

interpenetration of felt experience and processes of sharing

and reflecting on experience, the subjective and the social

become inseparable. In this regard, others have commented

on the potential that sharing technology-mediated experi-

ences may lift-up experience as meaningful [19, 23–26].

We propose to add, and explore through a design case, the

possibility of meaning and meaningfulness in the very

performance of being part of a crowd.

The particular crowds that we explore in this research

are football crowds performing their identities as fans and

members of their crowd in the heat of a football match [27,

28]. It has been suggested that participating at a sporting

event is about being a part of a united whole larger than

yourself, spontaneously staging an emergent and capricious

performance as a way of kindling an awareness of crowd

unity and distinctiveness with respect to the opposing

spectators [29]. This focus introduces the carnivalistic

elements of crowd experience that have often been missed

in designing for crowds. While enhancing spectator expe-

riences at sporting events by supporting spectators’ active

communication [30–32] or presenting information about

the sports to the spectators on large display or mobile

phones [33] can undoubtedly be fruitful, it underplays the

more spontaneous, and emergent qualities of spectator,

crowd experiences at sporting events, which are therefore

still novel in HCI.

In this paper, our aim is to develop a complementary

perspective on crowds that is focused on the uninhibited,

spontaneous, emergent aspects of crowd experience. As we

will show below, these aspects are strongly related to

communication and information sharing in the crowd. Our

work is situated in the setting of sporting events in which

fans’ identities are performed in their activity as members

of crowds of spectators, as the noise made by many dif-

ferent fans becomes the identifiable voice of their crowd.

To make our approach clear, we will first position our work

with respect to a sanitized view of spectator experiences in

crowds.

2 Sanitized spectator experiences in crowds

Anecdotally, and in some academic analyses [e.g., 34], the

experience of being part of a football crowd is the expe-

rience of carnival, free and unrestricted celebration, full of

fun and passion, and uninhibited familiar contact between

participants, often littered with profanity. In both the

ancient Greek and Roman worlds, the stadium created a

confined world inside which spectators were able to

momentarily forget their everyday life and problems [35].

Sporting events have been discussed as the working class

opportunity for temporary liberation from social status and

problems, a place separated from their everyday life where

the collective effort of the supporting fans and the team

could provide them with success on the pitch [36].

According to Bakhtin [37], carnival is an escape from the

official, hierarchical, reverent life of work or school, in

which, free from the formalities of the official life, people

work out new ways of being together, and new social

forms. Bakhtin was keen to point out that many modern

carnivals, in which performance has become spectacle, are

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

different to the medieval carnivals he wrote about. Medi-

eval carnivals would have not understood separation of

participation and spectacle. For Bakhtin, the medieval

carnival was a participative, creative event, not a spectacle.

Carnivalesque experience is the creative theatrical

expression of the potential for familiarity and free inter-

action, eccentricity, the unity of the apparently separate,

and the profane in sensual ritualistic performances. Foot-

ball fans crowded together in the stand, moving as one,

chanting profanely together, viscerally enjoying each oth-

er’s company, sometimes creatively mocking and baiting

the other side’s players and fans, and creatively performing

a single voice. One of the issues motivating our study is

concern about the possible sanitization of the crowd

experience and performance at matches, making spectators

of the football fans, and making the football crowd another

element of the official and the hierarchical in life.

2.1 Professionalized sporting events

In the 1950s, as the middle class grew and got wealthier,

middle-class consumers were presented with a variety of

new leisure and entertainment opportunities. Large shop-

ping centers, cinemas, steak houses, and bowling centers

were built to accommodate the middle class. In general,

people were able to be quite selective in their choice of

leisure activities, which obliged football clubs to profes-

sionalize their sporting events by increasing the focus on

entertainment, leisure, and convenience to court the

wealthier and growing middle class. The clubs and the

sporting events were professionalized and became a part of

the entertainment industry [36]. Cross-national ‘‘super

tournaments’’ were established to gather Europe’s best

clubs in order to provide spectators with high-quality and

entertaining sports. Along with these new cross-national

tournaments, televised broadcasts of the football matches

were introduced. All these entertainment enhancements

promoted the players to provide higher quality, entertain-

ing, and spectacular play and required the players to

become more organized in the way they played [36]. In this

way, the development of the sport itself made the matches

more dramatic, entertaining, and spectacular to watch.

Professionalization also brought about changes in

physical facilities. The facilities were improved by build-

ing new stands, extra seats, toilets, bars, restaurants,

museums, merchandise shops, and social clubs—in general

a more comfortable and convenient multi-functional setting

[38]. The settings around the pitch and match itself were

also subject to enhancements. Modern stadiums directed

spotlights onto the pitch to provide a more dramatic and

theatrical quality of the event, by focusing on the sport and

reducing the surroundings of the stands [39]. Furthermore,

the football clubs developed new forms of pre-match

entertainment in order to make the sporting event more

spectacular and entertaining while the spectators waited for

the match to begin, for example by introducing cheer-

leaders [36]. Sporting events during this period were made

more like an entertainment and leisure event, rather than

the participative, carnivalesque experiences that they had

been.

2.2 Spectator technologies

The technology introduced into football stadiums over the

last decade reflects the shift from participative perfor-

mance to spectatorship in the football fans’ and crowds’

experience. There are often large displays used to provide

additional information about the sport and to present

spectators with replays and close-up shots of the match

[40]. There seems to be two primary motives for imple-

menting large displays. The first is to bridge the gap in

large stadiums between the spectators and the play—

modern stadiums are getting larger and this creates a

greater distance between the pitch and the spectators [41].

Second, the large displays have the purpose of providing

the spectators with the same additional information and

statistics about the match that they otherwise would have

got by watching the match on television [42]. The large

displays blur the boundaries between watching the match

at home on the television and watching it ‘‘live’’ at the

stadium [40]. The displays ensure that the spectators

attending the sporting event will not be deprived from the

extra information about the sport that they have access to

in the televised match [43]. These large displays, aligned

with the professionalization of the sporting event,

emphasize the spectacular aspects of the play by repeat-

edly showing replays and close-up sequences of extraor-

dinary play [42]. The televised content on the large

displays provides a convenient package for the spectators

to watch the replays and details of the match if they

missed it in real time. The large displays enhance the

spectacular in a convenient and comfortable way.

Large displays at sporting events are no longer a novel

technology—they are rather standard technology for all

premier league sporting events. However, mobile tech-

nologies have attracted academic attention in recent years.

Primarily, engineers and computer scientists have

explored the potential of developing technology for

spectators at stadiums. Ault et al. [44] explore the

potential of using spectators’ mobile phones as an infor-

mation platform for sports content. In their concept, they

broadcast live television, statistics, and additional infor-

mation about the match to the spectators, to provide them

with more in-depth information about the sport itself. In a

similar experiment, Bentley and Groble [33] explore a

mobile application that also serves the spectators with

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

multimedia content and live multi-angle video streaming

of the sport. Even though these are novel experiments

with interactive technology at sporting events, they are

still grounded in a perspective on augmenting the sport.

Like large displays, these experimental systems provide

the individual spectator with additional information about

the match in a rather easy, convenient and passive way,

neglecting the active and collaborative aspects of being

part of the actual event. At distributed sporting events,

such as rallies, novel examples of technological systems

aiming at supporting spectators’ social and co-construc-

tive experiences have been explored [see e.g., 31, 32].

Nevertheless, the general perspective on technology at

sporting events, especially at soccer stadiums, is that they

should support the spectators’ engagement in the sport

itself. They aim at bringing the sport closer to the spec-

tators in a convenient manner is achieved either through

large displays or mobile phones.

2.3 The paradox of sanitized spectator experiences

at sporting events

The professionalization of the sporting event has during the

last couple of decades attracted an increased number of

spectators [45]. Nevertheless, some academics have stated

their concern that the professionalized sporting event

oppresses spectators’ activeness, engagement, expression,

and ecstatic celebration at the expense of increased focus

on convenience, safety, and crowd management [38].

Arguments have been made that the modern stadiums

have been ‘‘sanitized’’ by being subject to an ideologi-

cally rationalist perspective on sporting events and

spectatorship [see e.g., 39, 43, 46, 47]. The sporting

event has been rationalized to make the event safe,

convenient, comfortable, and well organized for the

spectators to enjoy the sport. This was in part an

understandable response to tragedies in European foot-

ball during the 1980s and 1990s [see e.g., 48]. Bale [39]

emphasizes that rationalization in itself is not a bad

thing, but the rationalization of sporting events has been

pushed to its limits and become restricting rather than

enlightening for the spectator. In his view, the ratio-

nalization has restricted and pacified the spectators’

active engagement rather than supporting it. The focus

on making everything safe, convenient, and efficient, in

order to serve human needs, has oppressed everything

that is expressing human feelings and emotions, because

nothing can happen spontaneously, autonomously, or

accidentally [49]. Bale [39] argues that replacing the

terraces at the old stadiums with all-seating areas has

the risk of compartmentalization, and limiting the

spectators’ possibilities to express themselves through

dialogue, movements, and interactions. In line with

Bale, King [46] argues that the modern all-seater sta-

diums limit the spectators’ opportunity for ecstatic cel-

ebration and bodily movement and expression. Seating

hinders group dynamics and crowd activities [50].

Clarke [36] argues that the general perspective on the

spectator has become that of a person who enjoys

watching the match as long as the physical and social

settings are comfortable and convenient—the spectator

is sitting in the seat and just waits to be entertained. The

sporting event is something that goes on ‘‘out there’’ on

the pitch, rather than something that the spectator is

taking active part of [36].

Some of these concerns are at risk of appearing to

romanticize the old sporting event. The professionaliza-

tion has changed the old ‘‘un-sanitized’’ working class

sporting event into a modern event that is safe, orga-

nized, and convenient, and which has managed to attract

a significantly more diverse group of spectators, includ-

ing women, children, and families, who attend and have

a good time enjoying the event. However, these critiques

contribute to an interesting discussion about what con-

stitutes and supports engaging crowd experiences, and

how they might go beyond the fascination of the sport

itself. These concerns outline a paradox of the profes-

sionalized sporting event. The football clubs know the

importance of ecstatic and emotionally engaged, active,

visible, and loud fans. It is the crowds that create the

atmosphere at the stadium, and who in the best-case

scenario will motivate the players to perform better.

They want their spectators to appear dedicated and

engaged on the TV transmissions of the match, and hope

by doing so to attract even more spectators. However, at

the same time, the clubs want the sporting event to be

safe, organized, convenient, and entertaining to attend.

Our purpose of highlighting this discussion is not rooted

in a romantic desire for the old unsanitized sporting

events, and we do acknowledge the concerns regarding

safety and organization at sporting events. Our aim is to

present an account of how the professionalization of

sporting events has affected the crowd experience, as a

way of bringing alternatives into focus for interaction

design in this context. Our design interest is in concep-

tualizing and realizing technology for crowd experiences

at sporting events that engages participants in the per-

formance of their identity as fans. So inevitably our bias,

such as it is, is toward the participative and carniva-

lesque in crowd experience. Of course, we understand

the arguments for a more safe, comfortable, and con-

trolled experience too but that is not the focus of this

particular project. That said, our preferred perspective

can complement the professionalized sporting event

while also addressing the paradox of the modern sporting

event.

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

3 Toward an understanding of crowd experience

In this section, we develop a conceptualization of crowd

experiences in order to further explore and discuss how

interactive technology might support those rather unique

collective crowd experiences. In doing so, Bakhtin’s

account of carnivalesque experience is to the fore in our

thinking in order to marry sociological crowd theory

with pragmatics experience. Our aim is a conceptuali-

zation of crowd experience as creative performance of an

alternative way of being that can be supported by tech-

nology. That is to say that our perspective on the crowd

experience at a football match, at its richest experien-

tially, is as a sensual theatrical performance of active

fandom, a collective escape from the official life and

normal rules of most other days and identification with a

passionate way of being other. It can most clearly be

seen in the ways in which fans dress in the colors of

their team and perform creatively in a single coherent

voice as members of their crowd. It can be felt in the

uninhibited passion and sense of belonging to a ‘‘body’’

of fellow fans that is not generally felt in official per-

formance. While this will be an inspiration in our

approach to designing for rich crowd experience at

football matches, something a little more practical is

needed to help us understand the dynamics of crowd

performance as the pragmatic basis of design. The work

of Gabriel de Tarde has proved extremely useful in this

regard.

In the European tradition of crowd theory [e.g.,

51–54] and crowd performance is understood as an

ongoing, dynamic sociality, which is quite different from

the performance of a collection of individuals. The

dynamics and behavioral aspects of the crowd are often

described as a contagion, where people in the crowd are

lured into the crowd through contagious imitation [54]

and behavioral suggestion [51]. This perspective is based

on the assumption that crowd dynamics are by nature

distinct from other social formations and that people

participating do not behave with rational forethought, but

to a high degree impulsively and spontaneously [54].

This is clearly resonant of Bakhtin’s notion of the cre-

ative performance of the carnival crowd.

According to Tarde, the performance of the crowd

spreads contagiously by imitation and invention, and the

spread is all the more contagious in contexts in which there

is a high density of people together, such as in cities and

one would imagine in football crowds.

Imitation is a cornerstone in the dynamics of crowd

experiences. According to Tarde, imitation is social and

sociality is imitation [51]. He argues that the high social

density of crowds makes them extreme in their sociality

in which imitations travels almost unmediated in the

crowd [51]. Imitation is central to the notion of crowd

experiences as it has a promotional function where

emotions, arousal, and excitement spread among people

in the crowd. The crowd has a magnetizing potential to

draw people into the crowd through the imitative

dynamic [55]. The dynamic of the crowd is that it is a

sociality with the goal of continuing growth by attracting

more people through the imitative and suggestive

behavior, seen as contagious invitations for people to

join. At football matches, the two crowds of rival fans

are usually the ones initiating and kindling the atmo-

sphere through collective songs, chants, and movements

at the stands during the event. But in situations in which

there is a strong sense of collective identity, the fans’

behavior spreads contagiously to other spectators, who

get carried away and become participants of the crowd

by imitating the behavior of the fans.

One essential dynamic that is central to imitation is

the crowd’s rhythmic performance often seen in physical

movements or in an acoustic performance [56, 57]. The

rhythm of the crowd consists of imitations that have the

potential to become hypnotic [55]. This rhythmic per-

formance, whether it is in the way in which fans chant

or stamp their feet or shout, cheer, or boo together, can

never be completely synchronous. The minor variations

in movement and voice of the crowd reinforce the par-

ticipants’ feeling of being a part of a united whole larger

than themselves [55, 57]. The noise of the crowd can be

characterized as a ‘‘sonospheric melding’’ where partic-

ipants in the crowds feel equal and create what Slot-

erdijk characterizes as a we-phenomenon [58]. For Tarde,

the acoustics of the crowd ‘‘is a strange phenomenon. It

is a gathering of heterogeneous elements, unknown to

one another; but as soon as a spark of passion, having

flashed out from one of these elements, electrifies this

confused mass, there takes place a sort of sudden orga-

nization, a spontaneous generation. This incoherence

becomes cohesion, this noise becomes a voice…’’ ([53]

italics added). The acoustics of the crowd becomes what

shapes the coherence in the crowd through the conta-

gious imitations.

The football crowd is in many ways a rather auton-

omous crowd with no formal leader that dictates the

activities. Many of the activities are initiated by indi-

vidual people in the crowd as suggestions for activities

to imitate. Songs and chants are suggested in the crowd

and rather spontaneously imitated by others, which might

suddenly shape cohesion and a united voice of the

crowd. However, the acoustic performance of the crowd

is not the only way in which the we-phenomenon is

shaped. The spectator crowds at sporting events have a

high level of visual coherence in the way they use the

same team colors using merchandise, football jerseys,

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

flags, scarfs, and in their use of tifos1 all in the same

colors, which makes the crowd homogeneous in their

visual appearance.

At sporting events, crowds are rather unique in their

characteristics due to the spatiality of the stadium,

forming a closed and contained ring in which the per-

formativity of the crowd is displayed to themselves and

for others to see [55]. In this arena, the rival spectator

crowd is located in the stands, not only facing the sport

itself, but also facing the rival spectator crowd. This

reinforces the crowd’s awareness of the power battle

against the opposing. The performance of the crowd is

not only a matter of intrinsic constitution of the crowd

through imitation and invention, but also a matter of an

external performance directed toward rival crowds. The

battle of power in the stadium is in many respects an

element that constitutes and shapes the collective

coherence among the spectator crowds.

There is an intrinsic relation between imitation and

invention. In Tarde’s sociology, imitations have the

potential to create new inventions. Inventions emerge

when two imitations collide and emerge into a new

invention [52]. Due to the high social density, crowds are

especially disposed to emergent and inventive behavior.

Inventions are almost capricious and accidental [59];

however, through a process of elimination due to peo-

ple’s desires and dispositions, some emergent behavior

will become harmonious and coherent and then be subject

to imitation in the crowd. This capricious emergence

happens through the extreme social facilitation of the

dense crowd.

Even though the people in the crowd are disposed

toward unconscious imitations, they are not just passively

consuming the crowd performance. The crowd has a

creative potential in inventing new emergent behaviors.

At football matches, spectator crowds not only imitate

each other by chanting, but also by singing, and dancing.

New songs, dances, chants, new rituals, and ways of

behaving emerge from imitation due to the high degree of

invention in the crowd.

As mentioned before, the relevance and value for HCI

and interaction design of bringing together crowd theory

and Bakhtin’s perspective on canivalesque experience is in

its potential to contribute to understandings of crowd

experience at sporting events. This is especially clear in the

conjunction of Bakhtin’s performative approach to expe-

rience with a Tardean approach to the potential of the

crowd through imitation and invention. In the next section,

we describe a design case study in which that conjunction

is explored, in which imitation and invention, as key

dynamics in crowd experience, are used to provoke the

unexplored potential for technology-mediated crowd

experiences.

4 Design case

The BannerBattle prototype2 was developed as a part of

the iSport research project at Center for Interactive

Spaces.3 The focus of the project was to understand how

interactive technology in three different projects could

support elite athletes, recreational athletes, and spectator

experiences at sporting events. As part of the final topic,

the current project was intended to explore and establish

an understanding of how to design interactive technology

for active spectators experiences by crowd experiences at

sporting events.

This project was informed by ethnographically inspired

field studies in which we followed groups of soccer sup-

porters before, during, and after sporting events. We also

went on a fan-bus ride (see Fig. 1), traveling 5 h to an

away football match, in order to gain greater insights into

fan and spectator experiences and culture, through partic-

ipant observations and semi-structured interviews [61, 62].

Furthermore, constructive workshops with football sup-

porters were also carried out, which will be described

below.

The participant observer field study on the 5-h fan-bus

ride was conducted at a Sunday match. There were about

135 fans in three busses, and the trip was arranged by the

official fan club. It was the first match after the winter

break; therefore, many of the fans were looking forward to

Fig. 1 Traveling with fans on a 5-h bus ride to an away match

1 Tifos are collectively choreographed mosaics often made of several

100s of colored flags carried by the spectator crowd.

2 See Veerasawmy and Iversen [60] for more discussions on

BannerBattle and an introduction of crowd theory into interaction

design.3 http://www.interactivespaces.net.

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

the Danish Premier League starting up again. The fans we

traveled with were supporting a team normally located in

the middle of the league, and team they were to play was

the previous year’s league champions. This made it a high

profile match for the traveling fans, which was seen in the

relatively large numbers of fans traveling to the match. We

conducted semi-structured interviews and participant

observations both in the busses and at the match. We used

video recordings and photos to capture the interviews and

our observations.

Before matches, spectators typically built up expecta-

tions based on rituals, collective memories, and ‘‘war sto-

ries’’ from previous matches and experiences. The fans

who travelled all the away to the matches had informally

assigned seating in the bus, and were very aware of not

taking someone else seat and who to sit next to. They also

had recognizable banter and stories that they always would

tell. One fan always asked on entering the bus, ‘‘Is there

anyone here who does not know about Laura [his grand-

child].’’ Then, most people shout ‘‘Yes! We know that

story’’ but there is always one who says ‘‘no.’’ So he can

tell the story of his grandchild again. Everyone expects this

ritual to happen when that fan enters. Another example of a

ritualized act is when the bus guide announces the prices

for beer and bottles of water that can be bought on the bus.

The same group of people always yell to the tour guide

‘‘how much does a box of water cost?’’ During the bus trip,

the fans also spend time telling a lot of stories about pre-

vious trips and matches. These stories and memories are

shared with the other fans, and songs are sung as a ‘‘warm

up’’ before the event, and to build up tension and antici-

pation of what is to happen. These activities focus mainly

on expressions of loyalty to the football team and to fellow

fans. These activities are continued at the stand with hun-

dreds of other fans in their colored football jerseys. After

the match, opinions of the result, match, and players are

discussed. If the team had won they would often sing

songs, cheer, and share their joy and excitement with the

crowd. If they lost, they would be disappointed and less

excited. However, many expressed in the interviews that

they can still have had a good time. As one guy explained

on the bus trip home from a very disappointing match

where their team lost significantly ‘‘… even though we lost

0–5 today it has still been a very good day, supporting the

team and traveling together with the other fans.’’ The

results of the matches mean a great deal for the fans, but

being together with fellow fans in a crowd supporting the

team is a significant aspect of their experience.

The knowledge gained through participant observation

and the interviews described above formed the basis for a

co-design workshop. At the workshop, eight football,

handball, and basketball fans from local clubs participated

in exploring their ideas of how technology could support

crowd experiences at stadiums. The overall theme for the

workshop was ‘‘design your future stadium.’’ The work-

shop was divided in two parts. First, the spectators were to

thematise what constituted a good stadium experience by

writing keywords on post-it notes and then organize them

into themes. Second, using these themes as a point of

departure, the fans engaged in sketching scenarios [63] and

collaborative prototyping [64], in order to generate

knowledge about how technology could support engaging

crowd experiences (see Fig. 2).

At the workshop, the fans quickly initiated discussions on

how they could improve the atmosphere at the stadium,

which created a direction for the rest of the workshop

activities. Themes such as creativity, the social aspect, bat-

tling the rival crowd, and supporting the team dominated the

discussions. The fans thought of themselves and of their

activities in the stands as creative. They particularly enjoyed

the creativity in their use of merchandise, home designed

flags, banners, and tifos, which they saw as visual artworks.

They also enjoyed the creativity of making up chants and

songs about the event, rival team, or other more or less rel-

evant life events. At one match, the visiting team’s goal-

keeper recently fell in his bathtub and therefore the home

spectator crowd brought lots of inflatable bathing pools to the

event as a reference to the incident and as a way of mocking

the goalkeeper. The social aspect of attending the events was

manifested in various activities. Before the match, the fans

often met at a bar or outside the stadium to ‘‘warm up’’ and to

build up anticipation. Inside the stadium, they often had the

same seats and sit next to the same fellow fans in order to

discuss the match and to chant and sing the same songs. After

the match, depending on the result, the fans often went to an

after-match bar drinking, discussing the match, and social-

izing with fellow fans.

Fig. 2 Football, handball, and basketball fans mocking-up their

visions and desires for interactive technology that supports crowd

experiences at the stadium

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

Another quite interesting theme presented by the fans at

the workshop was the battle between the rival spectator

crowds. This battle is a performative non-violent battle

between the two rival sets of fans at the stadium. The

workshop participants explained how this is a very sig-

nificant and motivating aspect of the experience of

attending the event. The performative battle between the

two crowds is often constituted by chants, songs, dances, or

stampings in the stand. It is a battle to be the dominating

and loudest crowd in the stadium. At times, the two crowds

create a performative dialogical battle where one crowd

sings directly to the rival crowd and then the rival crowd

answer back or respond to the song. We observed this

phenomenon in our field studies where the visiting spec-

tator crowd sang ‘‘why is it so quiet in Copenhagen [the

city of the home team]?’’ drawing attention to the fairly

passive home crowd. Then, the home crowd answered back

by chanting, ‘‘we hate, we hate, we hate AGF [the visiting

team]!’’ The workshop participants also discussed the

importance of attending the event to be the ‘‘twelfth

player’’ to support their team.

With these themes as points of departure, the partici-

pants started to mock up the ‘‘their future stadium’’ by

using different props (see Fig. 2). They discussed how

technology could support and stage their fan activities,

performances, and the battle with the rival spectator

crowd. The participants decided to explore how technol-

ogy could support their battle with the rival crowd. The

workshop participants created a mockup of a stadium that

had a long ring of lights around the pitch and microphones

that would monitor the noise of the spectator crowds. The

light would change color according to the loudest crowd in

the stadium. As one participant explained ‘‘you compete

among the crowds on who is best [most dominating and

loud crowd].’’ There were some discussions among the

participants on where the ring of lights would be placed,

whether it should be around the pitch or on the edge of the

roof above grand stands so it was more visible. Among

other suggestions, an idea was presented that the stands

should have vibration sensors that would register when the

spectators stamped and large bass speakers that would

amplify the collective stamping to support the collective

feeling of the crowd.

Based on the themes from the field studies, workshop

activities and mockups, and crowd theory, we developed

the concept of supporting the crowds’ performative battle,

as it was a significant motivating aspect of the crowd

experience. The experimental prototype we created was to

a great extent a refinement and further development of the

workshop mockup. We will describe the concept in more

detail in the next section. We took the experimental pro-

totype out of our design lab and tested it in the crowd at the

local football stadium. Aarhus Elite, the local sporting

club, agreed to let us carry out experiments at a series of

football matches in the Danish Premier League for men.

The aim of these experiments was to deploy the experi-

mental prototype called BannerBattle as a research proto-

type exploring technology-supported crowd experiences in

the context of sporting events. In other words, it was an

experiment aimed at exploring technology-supported

crowd experiences in context, rather than testing and

evaluating it as a finalized prototype. The prototype was

explored at three football events at the same stadium, with

an average of 9,000 spectators attending. Our research aim

was to conduct research-through-design inquiries [65] with

the 9,000 spectators, by presenting them with BannerBat-

tle. Observation and semi-structured interviews were sup-

ported by video recordings and field notes. We observed

the spectator crowds by standing next to the pitch and also

from the top of the stand, where we simultaneously could

observe the crowd and the prototype. In this way, we got

observations of the front of the crowd and of the crowd

interacting with the prototype. During the semi-structured

interviews, we asked the spectators to reflect on their

understanding of the good spectator experience, technol-

ogy-supported crowd experiences, and how they experi-

enced the experiment. Most of the interviews were carried

out during halftime and immediately after the three mat-

ches at the stadium. We conducted interviews with both

home and visiting spectators, so both winning and losing

spectators.

4.1 Bannerbattle: the prototype

BannerBattle consists of two eight-meter-long digital

advertising-banner displays, two video cameras and

directional microphones, and three computers to analyze

the data and generate the graphics (see Figs. 3, 4). One

banner faced the home crowd, and the other faced the

visiting crowd. Both banners display identical interfaces

and content. Each crowd of fans was video and audio

recorded.

The video feeds from each of the two cameras were

overlaid with team colors. The audio output from each of

the two directional microphones was analyzed and visual-

ized as an equalizer, placed to separating the two video

feeds on the displays (the black area on the banner, see

Fig. 3).

At the beginning of the match, each spectator crowd has

their video feed displayed on half of the banners. As the

match and cheering progress, each crowd can win more

screen real estate by being louder and more physically

active than the rival crowd. This battle is monitored, ana-

lyzed, and measured in real-time by using motion tracking

in the video feed, and audio analysis.

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

The intention of the design of BannerBattle was to focus

on crowd experience, rather than on the sport on the pitch to

further the concepts, ideas, and results from the co-design

workshop. We aimed to support crowd experience by staging

and displaying the collective performance of the two crowds

on the banners in a battle against each other on becoming the

most dominating crowd at the stadium. The purpose of dis-

playing both crowds on the banners was twofold: to

emphasize the crowd members’ awareness of being a visu-

ally united entity and to make it possible for both crowds to

be displayed to the rival crowd (see Figs. 3, 5). Both video

feeds were augmented with the team colors, in order to make

the apposing areas clearly identifiable. To support and aug-

ment the collective rhythm of the crowd when singing,

chanting, shouting, or stamping in the stands, we visualized

their sounds and rhythms with an equalizer effect, separating

the two video feeds on the banner.

The input from the video cameras and the microphones

was not a precise way of measuring the activity of the

crowd, but it provided a link to crowd behavior in the

stands during the match. We also aimed to design Ban-

nerBattle to be open to instrumental appropriation [17]

that would invite the spectators to adapt and appropriate

the interaction with the banner in ways they would find

meaningful. During our field studies and our co-design

workshop, we found that the spectators were quite crea-

tive in the new ways of appropriating and bringing dif-

ferent props and materials to the event to support their

chants, songs, and battles with the rival crowd, as in the

episode described above where the spectator crowd

brought inflatable bathing pools at the event to mock the

competitors’ goalkeeper. Therefore, we aimed to design

the instrumentality of BannerBattle to be open to appro-

priation and alternative use by the spectators. We dis-

played the video feed of the two spectator crowds on the

banner. What would be shown, performed, or staged on

the banner through the video feeds, and how, would be

for the crowd to decide.

In the first of the three experiments, there was no

announcement of the banner. Only the participants at the

co-design workshop were informed about the experiment.

This did create some challenges in understanding the

functionality of the banner among some of the spectators

we interviewed after the match. However, before the two

other experiments, in collaboration with the club, we made

an announcement on their website [66] explaining the core

functionality of BannerBattle.

Fig. 3 One of two banners

displaying the two crowds

augmented with team colors

(blue and white, and red and

white), and an equalizer in

between, visualizing their sound

(color figure online)

Fig. 4 One of the video cameras and directional microphones

recording the home crowds at the stand

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

4.2 Findings from BannerBattle

In the following section, we will draw out points from the

prototype test sessions that were carried out at the three

matches. The data presented here are selected to stage the

discussion to come on how this relates to crowd experi-

ences. The analysis is based on the semi-structured inter-

views at three the football matches and on the observations

of spectators interacting with BannerBattle. We will pres-

ent findings relating to how the shift of the crowds’

attention continuously changed from interacting with the

banner and engaging in the match, the fairness of the battle

between the two crowds, how the crowds appropriated and

made sense of the banner in new and emergent ways, and

some general findings on the experiments.

We experienced how the attention of the crowd shifted

between BannerBattle and the sport itself. The intensity and

excitement of the matches varied a great deal according to

the importance of the match, the relational history of the

two teams, and how entertaining and well played the match

was. We observed comparable episodes during the three

experiments where when the match lost its intensity the

spectator crowd started to interact with BannerBattle. But,

whenever the match regained its intensity or when a par-

ticularly interesting episode occurred in the match, the

spectators immediately stopped the interaction with the

banner. Thus, the spectators only interacted with the banner

when the match was less intense, for example, when the

players were passing the ball around slowly in the middle of

the pitch without direction toward the goal. We observed

how one spectator started to chant while clapping his hands

above his head, which made the spectators next to him

follow and then suddenly everybody in the crowd was

chanting and clapping their hands, which resulted in more

screen area on the banner. But, then, one of the teams ini-

tiated a direct attack toward the goal, which made the crowd

immediately stop interacting with the banner and inten-

sively observe the match. This shift in behavior was com-

mon. With just ‘‘a spark’’ of passion, an act initiated as a

suggestive behavior from one spectator in the crowd seems

to gather others to imitate the same behavior. Nevertheless,

when the ball got closer to a goal, or the referee whistled for

a free, penalty, or corner kick, the spectators immediately

focused on supporting the team with chants, cheers, or

taunts. This shift between supporting the team and inter-

acting with the banner happened multiple times during the

match. However, in the beginning and in the end of each

half of the match, the spectator crowds seemed especially

devoted to support their teams thus most of the interaction

with the banner happened in between these periods.

Several visiting fans that were interviewed found it a bit

unfair that it was quite hard for the visiting crowd to capture

most of the banner because the home crowd would always

be in the majority in the stadium. One visiting spectator

expressed his discontent by stating ‘‘I think we were quite

loud and it [the majority of the screen real estate] did not

come on our side of the banner… you should be sure that the

battle is even to make it fair.’’ The larger home crowd could

chant louder and since the banner did not have a timed reset

function the visiting crowd had difficulties getting back on

the top of the match (see e.g., Fig. 5). This was a potential

risk we discussed during the co-design workshop. However,

the participants explained that the best crowd experiences

are not necessarily about being a superior crowd at the

Fig. 5 Visiting spectators

crowd, displayed in red and

white colors is being pushed

back on the banner by the home

crowd, displayed in blue and

white colors. Separating the two

crowds on the banner is an

equalizer located in the black

area, visualizing the two crowds

audio expanding horizontally

from the center of the black

arena (color figure online)

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

stadium. The fans explained that they found it highly

engaging to be the minor crowd at an away match. Being an

underdog enhanced their collectiveness and forced them to

stick together in the crowd, singing and chanting the same

things. However, we also experienced at our first experi-

ment that even though it can be engaging to be the minor

visiting crowd, the most engaging moments are when an

even battle is unfolding. In an interview with a home

spectator, he stated ‘‘maybe Esbjerg’s fans [the rival team’s

fans] could get some help or be given a preferential treat-

ment on the banner to make the battle more even.’’ In this

interview, the spectator also expresses a great anticipation

of the next match, as rumors have been that there would be

several thousands visiting spectators. From an experiential

point of view, the event is about the two crowds and their

battle performed with one another.

Even though it can be difficult for the visiting crowd to

gain majority of the banner, we also observed how the

visiting crowd appropriated the banner in a way we had not

expected. In the first experiment, the visiting crowd quite

early realized that it had no chance of beating the larger

home crowd over time. We noticed that the visiting crowd

made a ‘‘surprise attack’’ on the home crowd to gain more

screen real estate. This episode is illustrated in Fig. 6.

Here, the visiting crowd is rather passive and therefore

suppressed on the banner, but they are waiting and saving

their energy to attack the home crowd. Then, suddenly one

guy in the crowd shouts, ‘‘Come on guys!’’ which initiates

the chanting, singing, and dancing in the crowd within a

few seconds. As it is seen in Fig. 6, this collective per-

formance shows its effect at the banner where they gain

more screen real estate from the home crowd. However,

this surprise attack only last a couple of minutes until the

home crowd gather and strike back at the visiting crowd, as

it is seen in the last photo in Fig. 6 where the visiting

crowd have lost what they gained in the battle.

After the match, we interviewed a young visiting

spectator about the episode. He explained that they

waited until the home crowd paused in their chants,

songs, and dances, and then, they collectively started to

battle the home crowd to conquer the majority of the

banner for just a few minutes until the home crowd

struck back at them. He said: ‘‘When they [the home

crowd] are 20 times more than us, it is hard to compete

(…) but we waited until they got quieter, and then we

started.’’ This confirmed what we observed that by col-

lectively gathering singing, chanting, and dancing in the

periods when the home crowd was slacking, the visiting

crowd gained the majority of the banner for a few

minutes. The visiting crowd mostly interacted directly

with BannerBattle in moments where the home crowd

was relaxing and less intense in their chanting perfor-

mance. In those moments, the visiting crowd gathered

together coordinating their chants to catch the home

crowd off guard in order to gain screen real estate on the

banner.

We did not anticipate this pattern of behavior in the

design of the banner, but it illustrates how new ways of

performing and appropriating new technology in the stands

emerged in the crowd. Whether this type of emergent

behavior is solely a result of our employment of Banner-

Battle is open to debate. It is worth noting that this episode

has some similarities to some behaviors we also noticed in

our earlier field studies, where the two crowds were rather

silent and then one crowd initiated their chants and dances

to start the battle. There was an episode where the visiting

crowd was teasing a silent home crowd by chanting ‘‘why

is it so quiet in Aarhus [the home team’s city].’’ Thus, it is

Fig. 6 Photo series of the visiting crowd waiting for the right moment to battle the larger home crowd when they become less intense in their

chants

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

not that this episode of emergent behavior not could have

happened without BannerBattle. Moreover, it is not nec-

essarily likely to be a recurring pattern of use either. For

example, in the second experiment, when interviewed

about this issue, two visiting fans commented, ‘‘that is just

to bully us… we did not make any collective surprise

attacks nor did we at any time conquer the majority of the

banner.’’ This illustrates how appropriating and making

sense of the banner was done in different ways.

There was a general excitement about BannerBattle

among the crowds that tried it. The visiting spectator

crowd spoke about the positive affect it had on their

engagement because they were a minority and therefore

had to collectively gather in order to beat the home

crowd once in a while. However, one fan that we

interviewed stated a concern with the equalizer visual-

izing the two crowds auditory rhythmic performance, ‘‘I

would have liked a better equalizer that visualized our

audio better… it is not fast enough to catch the changes

[in their rhythms], that would have been great.’’ Fur-

thermore, some spectators found the banner a bit hard to

understand because of two issues. First, some spectators

had a hard time seeing the banner from the back of the

top stand. The banner was too small with too much

graphical detail on it for them to fully understand its

functionality. Second, we aimed at designing the banner

and the interaction style rather open-ended. Open-ended

in regard to how the crowds would interact with the

banner, appropriate, and make sense of it. It had no

procedural interactional structure with a beginning and

end. BannerBattle augmented the immediate state of the

crowds by displaying the video feed of each crowd, and

it was up to the spectators themselves to decide and

experiment with how and what they would show to the

video camera. One spectator said in an interview, ‘‘It is

cool, but you have to get to know the concept a bit…But it is new and it could have a positive effect [on the

atmosphere].’’ The open-ended interaction style also had

benefits as illustrated in the example above, with the

visiting crowd’s tactic for momentarily winning. The

spectators we interviewed generally expressed a great

excitement for the concept and its further potential and

its support for improving the atmosphere. One of the

participants from the workshop said in an interview after

the first experiment at the stadium, ‘‘It is greater than I

expected it to be, even though it can be quite hard to see

yourself on the banner from the back of the stand…, but

I think that having the blue and white colors is quite

cool [the club colors that augmented the video feed (see

e.g., Fig. 5)].’’ Even though we observed only a modest

number of episodes of crowds appropriating and exper-

imenting with the banner in new emergent ways in the

three sporting events, there were definite signs of the

potential of such an open, performative system to attract

and influence the crowd’s emergent behavior.

5 Discussion

BannerBattle was our first attempt to design an experi-

mental prototype that aimed to explore crowd experiences

with interactive technology. Our deployment of Banner-

Battle was the materialization of our explorations of crowd

experience. BannerBattle addressed imitation and emer-

gence as the key experiential qualities of crowd experience

that we have been exploring. We saw in our observations

how the spectator crowd was collectively engaged with

interacting with the banner. Collectively singing, chanting,

and dancing, BannerBattle functioned as a display for the

crowd where their performance was displayed for them-

selves and for the opposing crowd. This fostered the

emergence of imitative behaviors in the crowd to win more

screen area on the banner.

The color filtered live video feed of the two crowds

supported coherence in the crowd emphasizing the col-

lective performance of the crowd rather than individual

spectator. Each crowd got a coherent visual identity, a

united whole. BannerBattle aimed to support spectators

to become active fans, part of the performative crowd

identity rather than just a collection of individuals. We

acknowledge that in some sense, the crowd consists of

individuals. As Reeves et al. [7] have argued, even

though a football supporter takes part in a crowd, he or

she is still an individual, as can be seen for example when

they customize their jerseys to stand out in the crowd.

However, our aim with BannerBattle was to explore the

experiential qualities of being an individual taking part of

a crowd that overwhelms any sense of individuality. The

spectators’ experiences recounted in interviews suggests

some value in seeing this experience in terms of Bakh-

tin’s [37] carnivalesque experience, where people dress-

ing up and wearing masks are seen as performing

creatively by trying on different identities to escape from

their everyday identity for a while. The visiting crowds

inventive use of lulls in the home fans performance to

express their identity as other is a case in point. In the

crowd, spectators feel a sense of liberating freedom from

their everyday life, not because it necessarily is an

undesired life, but being a part of the united whole of the

crowd provides the spectators with an opportunity to

explore and actively perform the collective identity of the

crowd, for a moment, and then to return to their everyday

life [55]. Sport fans do live their fan identity in their

everyday life with their social networks, friendship, and

workplace [67, 68]. We recognize that fandom can be an

inherent part of some spectators everyday lives; however,

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

we point to the spatial qualities of being collocated in a

crowd as a significant feeling for the crowd. During an

interview with a fan he said ‘‘when you are a part of the

crowd, supporting your team, everybody is equal no

matter gender, education, or economy, which is a unique

feeling.’’ The feeling of being a part of a crowd as a

united whole provides potential for a liberating crowd

experience of equality and unity among its participants.

BannerBattle is in many ways an interesting experi-

mental design prototype in the sense that it addresses a

novel perspective on technology-supported spectator

experiences at sporting events. As argued here, current

interactive technologies have a strong focus on augmenting

the sport itself with information about the sport on large

displays for people to consume or on mobile phones [e.g.,

33, 44]. We find that the novelty of BannerBattle is in the

perspective on spectator and crowd experience manifest in

the design. First of all, we have in this paper and during the

BannerBattle project explored spectators at sporting events

as active participants in meaningful unsanitized crowds.

When we talk about spectators as participating in crowds,

we emphasize that part of participation that involves being

part of the performative crowd that constitutes for many the

sporting event [55]. The spectators want to be ‘‘players of

the event’’ [28] and want their performance to contribute to

the sporting event [69]. Second, we have explored spec-

tator experiences from a conceptual understanding based

on crowd theory and a pragmatist perspective on experi-

ences as a phenomenon that are actively created rather than

simply passively consumed. Thus, with BannerBattle, we

aimed at designing interactive technology that supported

the spectator crowds with the opportunities to actively

engage in the crowd experience as an alternative to most

technological systems at sporting events today.

As we have stated earlier, the novelty of BannerBattle is

not in the technological system or implementation. Ban-

nerBattle was an experimental prototype designed to gen-

erate knowledge about crowd experiences at sporting

events. This has resulted in three novel experiments at

sporting events and a perspective on technology-supported

spectator experiences where the collective experience of

the fan at the stadium has been explored. As designing

interactive technology for the distinctiveness of crowd

experiences is in its early stages, we see BannerBattle as a

first attempt to address and establish an understanding of

crowds as distinct in their extremely imitative and emer-

gent sociality. Therefore, the understanding of crowd

experience established here should be seen as a step to

establish an awareness of crowd experiences. We see

crowd experiences as a generative concept that interaction

designers can benefit from exploring when designing for

contexts such as concerts, festival, and urban spaces where

people actively participate in creating a crowds. With

BannerBattle, we have illustrated how interactive tech-

nology for crowd experiences at professionalized sporting

events can stage crowd performances through the key

dynamics—imitation and invention—without compromis-

ing safety or commercial interests in the sporting event.

BannerBattle succeeded momentarily in supporting the

performative crowd by turning noise into a coherent voice

of the crowd.

Acknowledgments This research has been supported by Aarhus

University’s interdisciplinary research center Participatory IT, PIT.

BannerBattle was developed in the iSport project, under ISIS2. We

would like to thank our colleagues, who have helped with the project

at the Centre for Interactive Spaces. We thank Aarhus Elite for their

willingness to participate in our experiment, and interviewees and

workshop participants for contributing knowledge to the project.

References

1. Rogers Y, Lindley S (2004) Collaborating around vertical and

horizontal large interactive displays: which way is best? Interact

Comput 16:1133–1152. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2004.07.008

2. Grudin J (1994) Groupware and social dynamics: eight chal-

lenges for developers. Commun ACM 10(1145/175222):175230

3. Stewart J, Bederson BB, Druin A (1999) Single display group-

ware: a model for co-present collaboration. In: Proceedings of the

CHI ‘99. ACM Press, New York, pp 286–293

4. Carroll JM (2012) The neighborhood in the internet: design

research projects in community informatics, 1st edn. Routledge,

New York

5. Kaye J’ (2006) I just clicked to say I love you. In: Proceedings of

the CHI EA ‘06. ACM Press, New York, pp 363–368

6. Go K, Carroll J, Imamiya A (2000) Familyware. In: IFIP ‘00.

Springer, Boston, pp 125–140

7. Reeves S, Sherwood S, Brown B (2010) Designing for crowds.

In: Proceedings of the NordiCHI ‘10. ACM Press, New York,

pp 393–402

8. Benford S, Crabtree A, Reeves S et al (2006) The frame of the

game: blurring the boundary between fiction and reality in mobile

experiences. In: Proceedings of the CHI ‘06. ACM Press, New

York, pp 427–436

9. Dalsgaard P, Dindler C, Eriksson E (2008) Designing for par-

ticipation in public knowledge institutions. In: Proceedings of the

NordiCHI ‘08. ACM Press, New York

10. Sheridan JG, Dix A, Lock S, Bayliss A (2005) Understanding

interaction in ubiquitous guerrilla performances in playful arenas.

In: Fincher S, Markpolulos P, Moore D, Ruddle R (eds) People

and computers XVIII—design for Life. Springer, London,

pp 3–17

11. Paulos E, Goodman E (2004) The familiar stranger. In: Pro-

ceedings of the CHI (EA) ‘04. ACM Press, New York,

pp 223–230

12. Fisher K, Counts S, Kittur A (2012) Distributed sensemaking:

improving sense making by leveraging the efforts of previous

users. In: Proceedings of the CHI ‘12. ACM Press, New York,

pp 247–256

13. Massung E, Coyle D, Cater KF, et al (2013) Using crowdsourcing

to support pro-environmental community activism. In: Proceed-

ings of the CHI ‘13. ACM Press, New York, pp 371–380

14. Greenberg MD, Hui J, Gerber E (2013) Crowdfunding. In: Pro-

ceedings of the CHI EA ‘13. ACM Press, New York, pp 883–888

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

15. McCarthy J, Wright P (2004) Technology as experience. MIT

Press, Cambridge

16. Wright P, McCarthy J (2010) Experience-centered design:

designers, users, and communities in dialogue. Morgan &

Claypool

17. Petersen MG, Iversen OS, Krogh PG, Ludvigsen M (2004)

Aesthetic interaction: a pragmatist’s aesthetics of interactive

systems. In: Proceedings of the DIS ‘04. ACM Press, New York,

pp 269–276

18. Forlizzi J, Ford S (2000) The building blocks of experience: an

early framework for interaction designers. In: Proceedings of the

DIS ‘00. ACM Press, New York, pp 419–423

19. Forlizzi J, Battarbee K (2004) Understanding experience in

interactive systems. In: Proceedings of the DIS ‘04. ACM Press,

New York, pp 261–268

20. Bødker S (2006) When second wave HCI meets third wave

challenges. In: Proceedings of the NordiCHI ‘06. ACM Press,

New York, pp 1–8

21. Dewey J (1997) Experience and education. Touchstone, New

York

22. Shedroff N (2001) Experience design. New Riders pub.,

Indianapolis

23. Battarbee K (2003) Co-Experience: the social user experience. In:

Proceedings of the CHI (EA) ‘03. ACM Press, New York,

pp 730–731

24. Battarbee K, Koskinen I (2005) Co-experience: user experience

as interaction. CoDesign 1:5–18

25. Battarbee K (2003) Defining co-experience. In: Proceedings of

the DPPI ‘03. ACM Press, New York, pp 109–113

26. Battarbee K (2007) Co-experience: product experience as social

interaction. In: Schifferstein HNJ, Hekker P (eds) Product expe-

rience. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 461–477

27. Guttmann A (2006) Sports crowds. In: Schnapp JT, Tiews M

(eds) Crowds. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 111–132

28. Rinehart RE (1998) Players all: performance in contemporary

sport. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

29. Ludvigsen M, Veerasawmy R (2010) Designing technology for

active spectator experiences at sporting events. In: Proceedings of

the OZCHI ‘10. ACM Press, New York, pp 96–103

30. Esbjornsson M, Brown B, Juhlin O et al (2006) Watching the cars

go round and round: designing for active spectating. In: Pro-

ceedings of the CHI ‘06. ACM Press, New York, pp 1221–1224

31. Jacucci G, Oulasvirta A, Salovaara A (2006) Active construction

of experience through mobile media: a field study with implica-

tions for recording and sharing. Pers Ubiquit Comput

11:215–234. doi:10.1007/s00779-006-0084-5

32. Jacucci G, Oulasvirta A, Ilmonen T, et al (2007) Comedia:

mobile group media for active spectatorship. In: Proceedings of

the CHI ‘07. ACM Press, New York, pp 1273–1282

33. Bentley F, Groble M (2009) TuVista: meeting the multimedia

needs of mobile sports fans. In: Proceedings of the MM ‘09.

ACM Press, New York, pp 471–480

34. Giulianotti R (1999) Football: a sociology of the global game.

Polity Press, Cambridge

35. Kratzmuller B (2010) Show yourself to the people! In: Frank S,

Steets S (eds) Stadium worlds. Routledge, New York, pp 36–55

36. Clarke J (1978) Football and working class fans: tradition and

change. In: Ingham R, Hall S, Clarke J et al (eds) Football

hooliganism: the wider context. Inter-Action Inprint, London,

pp 37–60

37. Bakhtin M (1984) Rabelais and his world. Indiana University

Press, Bloomington

38. Crabbe T, Brown A (2004) ‘You‘re not welcome anymore’: the

football crowd, class and social exclusion. In: Wagg S (ed)

British football and social exclusion. Routledge, Abingdon,

pp 26–46

39. Bale J (1993) Sport, space and the city. Blackburn Press, NJ

40. Crawford G (2004) Consuming sport: fans, sport and culture.

Routledge, New York

41. Raitz KB (1995) The theater of sport. John Hopkins University

Press, London

42. Oriard M (1981) Professional football as cultural myth. J Am

Cult 4:27–41. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1981.0403_27.x

43. Bale J (2000) The changing face of football: stadiums and com-

munities. Soccer Soc 1:91–101. doi:10.1080/14660970008721251

44. Ault A, Krogmeier JV, Dunlop SR, Coyle EDJ (2008) eStadium:

the mobile wireless football experience. In: Proceedings of the

ICIW ‘08. IEEE, pp 644–649

45. Storm RK, Brandt HH (2008) Idræt og Sport I Den Danske

Oplevelsesøkonomi—Mellem Forening og Forretning. Imagine..

og Samfundslitteratur, Gylling, Denmark

46. King A (1998) The end of the terraces: the transformation of

English football in the 1990s. Leicester University Press, London

47. Brown A (1998) United we stand—some problems with fan

democracy. In: Brown A (ed) Fanatics! Power, identity, and

fandom in football. Routledge, New York, pp 50–67

48. Taylor J (1989) Hillsborough stadium disaster inquiry—interim

report. Secretary of State for the Home Department, London

49. Relph E (1981) Rational landscapes and humanistic geography.

Croom Helm, London

50. King A (2010) The new European stadium. In: Frank S, Steets S

(eds) Stadium worlds. Routledge, New York, pp 19–35

51. de Tarde G (1962) The laws of imitation, 2nd edn. Henry Holt,

New York

52. de Tarde G (1899) Social laws—an outline of sociology. Mac-

millan, New York

53. de Tarde G (1968) Penal philosophy. William Heinemann,

London

54. Le Bon G (2001) The crowd—a study of the poplar mind. Bat-

oche Books, Kitchener

55. Canetti E (1984) Crowds and power, 1st edn. Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, New York

56. Borch C (2009) Out of sight, out of mind: on the power/knowl-

edge of crowds and atmospheres. In: Strategic unknowns: the

usefulness of ambiguity and ignorance in organizational life

2009. Oxford, pp 1–22

57. Borch C (2005) Urban imitations: Tarde’s sociology revisited.

Theory Cult Soc 22:81–100. doi:10.1177/0263276405053722

58. Sloterdijk P (2008) Foam city. Distinkt Scand J Social Theory

9:47–59. doi:10.1080/1600910X.2008.9672955

59. Sampson TD (2012) Virality: contagion theory in the age of

networks. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

60. Veerasawmy R, Iversen OS (2012) BannerBattle—introducing

crowd experience to interaction design. In: Proceedings of the

NordiCHI ‘12. ACM Press, New York, pp 228–237

61. Flick U (2005) An introduction to qualitiative research, 2nd edn.

Sage, London

62. Blomberg J, Giacomi J, Mocher A, Swenton-Wall P (1993) Et-

nographic field methods and their relation to design. In: Schuler

D, Namioka A (eds) Participatory design: principles and prac-

tices. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, pp 123–155

63. Bødker S, Christiansen E (1997) Scenarios as springboards in

CSCW design. In: Bowker GC, Star SL, Turner W, Gasser L (eds)

Social science, technical systems, and cooperative work: beyond

the great divide. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp 217–233

64. Ehn P, Kyng M (1991) Cardboard computers: mocking-it-up or

hands-on the future. In: Greenbaum J, Kyng M (eds) Design at

work: cooperative design of computer systems. Lawrence Erl-

baum, Hillsdale, pp 169–195

65. Zimmerman J, Forlizzi J, Evenson S (2007) Research through

design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In:

Proceedings of the CHI ‘07. ACM Press, New York, pp 483–502

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123

66. Jensen B (2009) BannerBattle til AGF-BIF. http://www.agffod

bold.dk/agf-fodbold/nyhedsarkiv/2009/2-kvartal/bannerbattle-til-

agf-bif/?page=0. Accessed 30 Aug 2013

67. Giulianotti R (2002) Supporters, followers, fans, and flaneurs: a

taxonomy of spectator identities in football. J Sport Soc Issues

26:25–46. doi:10.1177/0193723502261003

68. Stone C (2007) The role of football in everyday life. Soccer Soc

8:169–184. doi:10.1080/14660970701224319

69. Fiske J (1992) The cultural economy of fandom. In: Lewis LA

(ed) The adoring audience: fan culture and popular media.

Routledge, London, pp 30–49

Pers Ubiquit Comput

123