12,203 research outputs found

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

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    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

    A Framework for Quality-Driven Delivery in Distributed Multimedia Systems

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    In this paper, we propose a framework for Quality-Driven Delivery (QDD) in distributed multimedia environments. Quality-driven delivery refers to the capacity of a system to deliver documents, or more generally objects, while considering the users expectations in terms of non-functional requirements. For this QDD framework, we propose a model-driven approach where we focus on QoS information modeling and transformation. QoS information models and meta-models are used during different QoS activities for mapping requirements to system constraints, for exchanging QoS information, for checking compatibility between QoS information and more generally for making QoS decisions. We also investigate which model transformation operators have to be implemented in order to support some QoS activities such as QoS mapping

    From Personalization to Adaptivity: Creating Immersive Visits through Interactive Digital Storytelling at the Acropolis Museum

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    Storytelling has recently become a popular way to guide museum visitors, replacing traditional exhibit-centric descriptions by story-centric cohesive narrations with references to the exhibits and multimedia content. This work presents the fundamental elements of the CHESS project approach, the goal of which is to provide adaptive, personalized, interactive storytelling for museum visits. We shortly present the CHESS project and its background, we detail the proposed storytelling and user models, we describe the provided functionality and we outline the main tools and mechanisms employed. Finally, we present the preliminary results of a recent evaluation study that are informing several directions for future work

    Challenges and opportunities of context-aware information access

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    Ubiquitous computing environments embedding a wide range of pervasive computing technologies provide a challenging and exciting new domain for information access. Individuals working in these environments are increasingly permanently connected to rich information resources. An appealing opportunity of these environments is the potential to deliver useful information to individuals either from their previous information experiences or external sources. This information should enrich their life experiences or make them more effective in their endeavours. Information access in ubiquitous computing environments can be made "context-aware" by exploiting the wide range context data available describing the environment, the searcher and the information itself. Realizing such a vision of reliable, timely and appropriate identification and delivery of information in this way poses numerous challenges. A central theme in achieving context-aware information access is the combination of information retrieval with multiple dimensions of available context data. Potential context data sources, include the user's current task, inputs from environmental and biometric sensors, associated with the user's current context, previous contexts, and document context, which can be exploited using a variety of technologies to create new and exciting possibilities for information access

    Managing evolution and change in web-based teaching and learning environments

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    The state of the art in information technology and educational technologies is evolving constantly. Courses taught are subject to constant change from organisational and subject-specific reasons. Evolution and change affect educators and developers of computer-based teaching and learning environments alike – both often being unprepared to respond effectively. A large number of educational systems are designed and developed without change and evolution in mind. We will present our approach to the design and maintenance of these systems in rapidly evolving environments and illustrate the consequences of evolution and change for these systems and for the educators and developers responsible for their implementation and deployment. We discuss various factors of change, illustrated by a Web-based virtual course, with the objective of raising an awareness of this issue of evolution and change in computer-supported teaching and learning environments. This discussion leads towards the establishment of a development and management framework for teaching and learning systems

    Content-aware power saving multimedia adaptation for mobile learning

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    Due to the tremendous enhancements in the capabilities of mobile devices in recent years and accessibility to higher bandwidth mobile internet, the use of online multimedia learning resources on mobile devices is increasingly becoming popular. Improvements in battery capacity have not matched the same advancements compared to other features of mobile devices. Limited Battery power is introducing a significant challenge in making better use of online educational multimedia resources. Online Multimedia Resources drains more battery power as a result of higher amount of wireless data transfer and therefore limiting learning opportunities on the move. Many power saving multimedia adaptation techniques have been suggested. Majority of these techniques achieve battery efficiency while reducing multimedia quality. So far, however, to the best of our knowledge no previous effort has considered the factor of learning efficacy in multimedia adaptation process. Existing adaptation techniques are susceptible to information loss as a result of quality of reduction. Such loss affects the learning content efficacy and jeopardizes the learning process. In this paper, we recommend a novel power save educational multimedia adaptation approach that considers the learning aspect of multimedia in the adaptation process. Our technique enables learning for extended duration by battery power saving without putting the learning process at risk. Efficacy of entire learning resources is managed by not allowing any part of the learning multimedia to be delivered in a quality that will negatively affect the learning outcome. We also present a framework that guides the implementation of our approach followed by description of our prototype application that uses educational multimedia metadata implemented in semantic web technologies

    Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead

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    Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user (e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed
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