Personalisation of digital museum guides through implicit recognition of visitor personas

Digital museum guides promise a transformed visitor experience through greater engagement with the museum content and activities. Realising that promise turns on the personalisation of digital guides, particularly in museum contexts where rich content is accessed by a highly diverse visitor population. Since users of a museum guide are typically first time users and since their usage is for a relatively short session, personalisation must use initial interaction data to associate the user with a particular persona and thereby infer other facts about the user’s preferences and needs. Two research aims follow: first to better understand the requirements of different visitor personas, and second, to develop methods for unobtrusively detecting a user’s persona from their interactions with a guide and their activity in the museum space. This paper presents the design of a research programme for: first, investigating mechanisms for automatic adaptation of digital museum guides based on identifying a visitor’s persona category from interaction data; second, exploring the requirements of different visitor categories to derive the user interface adaptation, and; third, investigating the effectiveness of this adaptation on the museum visitor’s experience

Managing Crowded Museums: Visitors Flow Measurement, Analysis, Modeling, and Optimization

We present an all-around study of the visitors flow in crowded museums: a combination of Lagrangian field measurements and statistical analyses enable us to create stochastic digital-twins of the guests dynamics, unlocking comfort- and safety-driven optimizations. Our case study is the Galleria Borghese museum in Rome (Italy), in which we performed a real-life data acquisition campaign. We specifically employ a Lagrangian IoT-based visitor tracking system based on Raspberry Pi receivers, displaced in fixed positions throughout the museum rooms, and on portable Bluetooth Low Energy beacons handed over to the visitors. Thanks to two algorithms: a sliding window-based statistical analysis and an MLP neural network, we filter the beacons RSSI and accurately reconstruct visitor trajectories at room-scale. Via a clustering analysis, hinged on an original Wasserstein-like trajectory-space metric, we analyze the visitor paths to get behavioral insights, including the most common flow patterns. On these bases, we build the transition matrix describing, in probability, the room-scale visitor flows. Such a matrix is the cornerstone of a stochastic model capable of generating visitor trajectories in silico. We conclude by employing the simulator to increase the number of daily visitors while respecting numerous logistic and safety constraints. This is possible thanks to optimized ticketing and new entrance/exit management

Proceedings of the 1st joint workshop on Smart Connected and Wearable Things 2016

These are the Proceedings of the 1st joint workshop on Smart Connected and Wearable Things (SCWT'2016, Co-located with IUI 2016). The SCWT workshop integrates the SmartObjects and IoWT workshops. It focusses on the advanced interactions with smart objects in the context of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), and on the increasing popularity of wearables as advanced means to facilitate such interactions

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GUIDELINES FOR DESIGNING DIGITAL MEDIA TO ENGAGE VISITORS WITH NON-VISIBLE OUTDOOR HERITAGE

This PhD investigates the role of digital media in optimising visitor engagement with non-visible outdoor heritage. Motivated by concerns that digital media products developed for the heritage sector might not be reaching their potential to enrich the visit experience and concerned about a lack of clarity as to what constitutes visitor engagement; this thesis proposes guidance for the production of interpretive digital media and a framework for visitor engagement. Cultural heritage sites featured in this study are characteristically outdoor locations; frequently non-stewarded with very little tangible evidence of the historical or cultural relevance of the site. The unique potential of digital media products to address the specific challenges of engaging visitors with invisible heritage in these locations is discussed within this thesis. The practice of interpreting heritage is investigated to identify the processes, stages, experiences and behavioural states associated with a high level of engagement. Visitor engagement is defined in this study as being a transformational experience in which the visitor’s emotional and/or cognitive relationship with the heritage is altered. This is achieved when the visitor sufficiently experiences appropriate states of engagement across all stages of the visitor engagement framework. This study proposes guidance to advise and support heritage professionals and their associated designers in the design, development and implementation of interpretive digital media products. Within this guide sits the engagement framework which proposes a framework for engagement, defining the stages (process) and the states (experiences and behaviours) of visitor engagement with cultural heritage. In using this resource the cultural heritage practitioner can be confident of their capacity to run and deliver interpretive digital media projects regardless of their expertise in design or technology. This thesis proposes that well designed interpretive digital media can optimise the engagement of visitors in ways which cannot be achieved by any other single method of interpretation. This PhD contributes a design guide and an engagement framework to the existing field of knowledge regarding interpretive digital design

Intelligent Sensors for Human Motion Analysis

The book, "Intelligent Sensors for Human Motion Analysis," contains 17 articles published in the Special Issue of the Sensors journal. These articles deal with many aspects related to the analysis of human movement. New techniques and methods for pose estimation, gait recognition, and fall detection have been proposed and verified. Some of them will trigger further research, and some may become the backbone of commercial systems

Gifting personalised trajectories in museums and galleries

The designers of digital technologies for museums and galleries are increasingly interested in facilitating rich interpretations of a collection’s exhibits that can be personalised to meet the needs of a diverse range of individual visitors. However, it is commonplace to visit these settings in small groups, with friends or family. This sociality of a visit can significantly affect how visitors experience museums and their objects, but current guides can inhibit group interaction, especially when the focus is on personalisation towards individuals. This thesis develops an approach to tackling the combined challenge of fostering rich interpretation, delivering personalised content and supporting a social visit. Three studies were undertaken in three different museum and gallery settings. A visiting experience was developed for pairs of visitors to a sculpture garden, drawing upon concepts from the trajectories framework (Benford et al., 2009). Next, a study at a contemporary art gallery investigated how gift-giving could be used as a mechanism for personalisation between visitors who know each other well. Finally, the third study, at an arts and history museum, explored how gift-giving could be applied to small groups of friends and family. The thesis reports on how the approach enabled visitors to design highly personal experiences for one another and analyses how groups of visitors negotiated these experiences together in the museum visit, to reveal how this type of self-design framework for engaging audiences in a socially coherent way leads to rich, stimulating visits for the whole group and each individual member. The thesis concludes by recommending the design and gifting of museum and gallery interpretation experiences as a method for providing deeply personalised experiences, increasing visitor participation, and delivering meaningful group experiences

The changing place of information: An examination and evaluation of how the context in which an object is set affects the information which it conveys.

This research examined how the context in which an object is placed affects the information that person viewing the object gleans from it. It used objects displayed in museums as they were easily accessible and were a ready source of a variety of types of display and information. It used the concept of ‘object as document’, initially developed by Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet and further developed by Michael Buckland and Kiersten Latham, who also specifically set out how a museum object can be a document. It gathered data using observational techniques with an application developed using FileMaker database software which could be used on an iPad and which can easily be adapted to different situations. Museum curators were also interviewed about how they displayed objects and what information they believed it was important to make available in order to help visitors understand these objects. Similarly, they discussed what was important to leave out. This research backed up their ideas regarding the level of displayed information. It found that context does make some difference, especially if that context is an unexpected or unusual context. However, it also found that the familiarity or relationship of the object to the person was equally as important. The quantitative data collected regarding information directly displayed or intrinsically with the object supports the concept of object as document

THE CHANGING PLACE OF INFORMATION: An examination and evaluation of how the context in which an object is set affects the information which it conveys.

This research examined how the context in which an object is placed affects the information that person viewing the object gleans from it. It used objects displayed in museums as they were easily accessible and were a ready source of a variety of types of display and information. It used the concept of ‘object as document’, initially developed by Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet and further developed by Michael Buckland and Kiersten Latham, who also specifically set out how a museum object can be a document. It gathered data using observational techniques with an application developed using FileMaker database software which could be used on an iPad and which can easily be adapted to different situations. Museum curators were also interviewed about how they displayed objects and what information they believed it was important to make available in order to help visitors understand these objects. Similarly, they discussed what was important to leave out. This research backed up their ideas regarding the level of displayed information. It found that context does make some difference, especially if that context is an unexpected or unusual context. However, it also found that the familiarity or relationship of the object to the person was equally as important. The quantitative data collected regarding information directly displayed or intrinsically with the object supports the concept of object as document