User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Cultural Summit II Work Book

OklahomaFeasibility study sInstitute of Museum and Library Service

Our Museum Special Initiative: An Evaluation

Our Museum: Communities and Museums as Active Partners was a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Special Initiative 2012 – 2016. The overall aim was to influence the museum and gallery sector to:* Place community needs, values and active collaboration at the core of museum and gallery work* Involve communities and individuals in decision-making processes* Ensure that museums and galleries play an effective role in developing community skills and the skills of staff in working with communitiesThis was to be done through facilitation of organisational change in specific museums and galleries already committed to active partnership with communities.Our Museum offered a collaborative learning process through which institutions and communities shared experiences and learned from each other as critical friends. Our Museum took place at a difficult and challenging time for both museums and their community partners. Financial austerity led to major cutbacks in public sector expenditure; a search for new business models; growing competition for funding; and organisational uncertainty and staff volatility. At the same time, the debate at the heart of Our Museum widened and intensified: what should the purpose of longestablished cultural institutions be in the 21st century; how do they maintain relevance and resonance in the contemporary world; how can they best serve their communities; can they, and should they, promote cultural democracy

Issues in conducting expert validation and review and user evaluation of the technology enhanced interaction framework and method

A Technology Enhanced Interaction Framework has been developed to support designers and developers design and develop technology enhanced interactions for complex scenarios involving disabled people. Issues of motivation, time, and understanding when validating and evaluating the Technology Enhanced Interaction Framework were identified through a literature review and questionnaires and interviews with experts. Changes to content, system, and approach were made in order to address the identified issues. Future work will involve detailed analysis of the expert review and validation findings and the implementation of a motivating approach to user evaluation

The evolution of networks and interaction in the co-creation of value : a case study of the development of a city museum

Vargo and Lusch (2004) proposed that marketing is moving to a new dominant logic where service is exchanged for service. Central to their proposal were eight foundational premises (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), subsequently extended to ten (Vargo and Lusch, 2008a). Key amongst them are: service is deemed to be the fundamental basis of exchange (FP1); operant resources are the fundamental source of competitive advantage (FP4); the customer is always a co-creator of value (FP6); the enterprise can only offer value propositions, it cannot deliver value (FP7); value creation occurs in networks through actors who are resource integrators (FP9); and value itself is ‘idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual and meaning-laden’ (FP10) (Vargo and Lusch, 2008a, p.375). Much discussion on S-D logic has focused on developing this theoretical context (see for example: Lusch and Vargo, 2006, 2009; Vargo and Lusch, 2008b, 2008c; Gummesson, Lusch, Vargo, 2010; Brodie et al., 2011). Alongside this, the debate has developed through studies which explore how the tenets of S-D logic operate in practical contexts such as financial services (Auh et al., 2007), art experiences (White, Hede and Rentschler, 2009), opera (Lund, 2010), the travel industry (Fyrberg and Juriado, 2009), electronic services (Blazevic and Lievens, 2008) and the Harry Potter phenomenon (Brown and Patterson, 2009) amongst others. Central to much of this work is the effort to understand how value is cocreated within varying contexts. Of particular interest to the current research is the work of Fryberg and Juriado (2009) who highlight the importance of networks in the co-creation of value, paying particular attention to the importance of interaction between network actors. Further, defining value and value propositions has received increasing attention (Gronroos, 2008; Kowalkowski, 2011). Through a case study of the Cardiff Story, a new museum for the people of Cardiff, this paper builds on previous work on S-D logic by exploring how networks and interaction evolve over time and the role they play in the evolving nature of value co-creation. The unique site of the work, the development from inception of a city museum, allows us to explore S-D logic in the public sector while taking into consideration the specific nature of arts and heritage in that context. The paper begins by reviewing pertinent S-D logic constructs to provide context for the current work. The methods section details the research position adopted before providing a justification for the single case study nature of this work. Context for the Cardiff Story is provided before the data collection methods are outlined. Findings are subsequently discussed before a conclusion is offered and areas for future research outlined

Introduction: migrating heritage - experiences of cultural networks and cultural dialogue in Europe

No abstract available

Integrated Support for Handoff Management and Context-Awareness in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The overwhelming success of mobile devices and wireless communications is stressing the need for the development of mobility-aware services. Device mobility requires services adapting their behavior to sudden context changes and being aware of handoffs, which introduce unpredictable delays and intermittent discontinuities. Heterogeneity of wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G) complicates the situation, since a different treatment of context-awareness and handoffs is required for each solution. This paper presents a middleware architecture designed to ease mobility-aware service development. The architecture hides technology-specific mechanisms and offers a set of facilities for context awareness and handoff management. The architecture prototype works with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which today represent two of the most widespread wireless technologies. In addition, the paper discusses motivations and design details in the challenging context of mobile multimedia streaming applications

Promising Beginning? Evaluating Museum Mobile Phone Apps

Since 2009 museums have started introducing mobile apps in their range of interpretative media and visitor services. As mobile technology continues to develop and permeate all aspects of our life, and the capabilities of smart phones increase while they become more accessible and popular, new possibilities arise for cultural institutions to exploit these tools for communicating in new ways and promoting their exhibitions and programmes. The use of mobile apps opens up new channels of communication between the cultural institution and the user, which extent to his or her personal space and go beyond the boundaries of the museum’s walls. The paper presents a survey carried out of mobile apps designed by art or cultural historical museums and analyses the wider issues which are raised by the findings. It discusses, among others, the kind of use these apps were designed to fulfil (e.g. the majority are guided tours to the permanent collections or to temporary exhibitions), the layering of content,and the type of user interaction and involvement they support