Parallel exhibitions : empowering users to virtually and physically design customized museum exhibits

Digital content is ubiquitous in all parts of life today. In particular Web 2.0 technology changed the way of communication. It allows everybody to contribute to digital content and to reach a large audience. The possibility to contribute also has an effect on the desire to contribute to real world'' matters. At the same time an incredible amount of information is online accessible without any effort. In many cases this enables us to find specific information fast and without leaving our current location. This forces public knowledge places, like libraries or museums, to re-think their role as knowledge providers. These institutions have to become places of social interaction which provide meaningful collections of objects and information as well as space for creativity. Visiting a museum is a great experience. Seeing objects, which have texture and physical characteristics combined with the history and the story of the exhibit, is an adventure and beneficial for engagement with a certain topic. Museums store much more objects, than they can present. These exhibits are not accessible for the public and sometimes not even for research purposes. It is a challenging task for curators and museum professionals to select objects for a meaningful and appealing arrangement. Re-creating and re-arranging exhibits in museums is mostly prohibited for visitors, because shown exhibits are often one of a kind, expensive, or damageable. During the last decade museums build large databases to index their objects. In Parallel Exhibitions we make use of these databases to invite visitors to become co-curators in museums. We design and implemented an application, which allows museum visitors to contribute to the exhibition design. Curators can additionally include physical exhibition in the virtual interaction space to create a close relationship to other exhibits in the museum. To evaluate our concept and our application we conducted a field test in a museum as well as an online study. In addition we interviewed possible users and museums professionals. We observed a rich social interaction around our application in the field study and the studies confirm that visitors have an interest to contribute to exhibitions they are visiting, both locally and on social media

Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Co-located Collaborative Information-based Ideation through Embodied Cross-Surface Curation

We develop an embodied cross-surface curation environment to support co-located, collaborative information-based ideation. Information-based ideation (IBI) refers to tasks and activities in which people generate and develop significant new ideas while working with information. Curation is the process of gathering and assembling objects in order to express ideas. The linear media and separated screens of prior curation environments constrain expression. This research utilizes information composition of rich bookmarks as the medium of curation. Visual representation of elements and ability to combine them in a freeform, spatial manner mimics how objects appear and can be manipulated in the physical world. Metadata of rich bookmarks leverages capabilities of the WWW. We equip participants with personal IBI environments, each on a mobile device, as a base for contributing to curation on a larger, collaborative surface. We hypothesize that physical representations for the elements and assemblage of curation, layered with physical techniques of interaction, will facilitate co-located IBI. We hypothesize that consistent physical and spatial representations of information and means for manipulating rich bookmarks on and across personal and collaborative surfaces will support IBI. We hypothesize that the small size and weight of personal devices will facilitate participants shifting their attention from their own work to each other and collaboration. We evaluated the curation environment by inviting couples to participate in a home makeover design task in a living-room lab. We demonstrated that our embodied cross-surface curation environment supports creative thinking, facilitates communication, and stimulates engagement and creativity in collaborative IBI

The Museum Explorer: User Experience Enhancement In A Museum

A learner in an informal learning environment, such as a museum, encounters various challenges. After initial assessment, a set of methods were proposed that may enhance a learner’s experience in a museum using computer aided technologies. The most important insight was the need to support the museum visitor in three phases of activity: prior to the visit, during the visit, and after the visit. We hypothesized that software tools that could help connect these three phases would be helpful and valuable supports for the visitor. To test and evaluate our hypothesis, a system called “The Museum Explorer” was built and instantiated using the collection in the Museum of Antiquities located at the University of Saskatchewan. An evaluation of the Museum Explorer was conducted. Results show that the Museum Explorer was largely successful in achieving our goals. The Museum Explorer is an integrated solution for visitors in museums across the pre-visit, visit, and post-visit phases. The Museum Explorer was designed to provide a means to connect and transfer user experience across the major phases of a museum visit. For each phase of a visitor’s experience, a set of tools was built that provides intelligent and interactive communication features. To assist visitors selecting artefacts to visit, a recommender system allows users to select a set of constraints. To better manage interactivity, features and functions were offered based on context. A study was conducted with volunteer museum visitors. Results from the study show that the Museum Explorer is a useful support. Analysis of the usage data captured by the Museum Explorer has revealed some interesting facts about users’ preferences in the domain that can be used by future researchers

Augmented Reality and Robotics: A Survey and Taxonomy for AR-enhanced Human-Robot Interaction and Robotic Interfaces

This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers. Augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) have emerged as a new way to enhance human-robot interaction (HRI) and robotic interfaces (e.g., actuated and shape-changing interfaces). Recently, an increasing number of studies in HCI, HRI, and robotics have demonstrated how AR enables better interactions between people and robots. However, often research remains focused on individual explorations and key design strategies, and research questions are rarely analyzed systematically. In this paper, we synthesize and categorize this research field in the following dimensions: 1) approaches to augmenting reality; 2) characteristics of robots; 3) purposes and benefits; 4) classification of presented information; 5) design components and strategies for visual augmentation; 6) interaction techniques and modalities; 7) application domains; and 8) evaluation strategies. We formulate key challenges and opportunities to guide and inform future research in AR and robotics

Evaluation of the influence of personality types on performance of shared tasks in a collaborative environment

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an area of computing that has been receiving much attention in recent years. Developments in groupware technology, such as MERL’s Diamondtouch and Microsoft’s Surface, have presented us with new, challenging and exciting ways to carry out group tasks. However, these groupware technologies present us with a novel area of research in the field of computing – that being multi-user Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). With multi-user HCI, we no longer have to cater for one person working on their own PC. We must now consider multiple users and their preferences as a group in order to design groupware applications that best suit the needs of that group. In this thesis, we aim to identify how groups of two people (dyads), given their various personality types and preferences, work together on groupware technologies. We propose interface variants to both competitive and collaborative systems in an attempt to identify what aspects of an interface or task best suit the needs of the different dyads, maximising their performance and producing high levels of user satisfaction. In order to determine this, we introduce a series of user experiments that we carried out with 18 dyads and analyse their performance, behaviour and responses to each of 5 systems and their respective variants. Our research and user experiments were facilitated by the DiamondTouch – a collaborative, multi-user tabletop device

Multimedia Development of English Vocabulary Learning in Primary School

In this paper, we describe a prototype of web-based intelligent handwriting education system for autonomous learning of Bengali characters. Bengali language is used by more than 211 million people of India and Bangladesh. Due to the socio-economical limitation, all of the population does not have the chance to go to school. This research project was aimed to develop an intelligent Bengali handwriting education system. As an intelligent tutor, the system can automatically check the handwriting errors, such as stroke production errors, stroke sequence errors, stroke relationship errors and immediately provide a feedback to the students to correct themselves. Our proposed system can be accessed from smartphone or iPhone that allows students to do practice their Bengali handwriting at anytime and anywhere. Bengali is a multi-stroke input characters with extremely long cursive shaped where it has stroke order variability and stroke direction variability. Due to this structural limitation, recognition speed is a crucial issue to apply traditional online handwriting recognition algorithm for Bengali language learning. In this work, we have adopted hierarchical recognition approach to improve the recognition speed that makes our system adaptable for web-based language learning. We applied writing speed free recognition methodology together with hierarchical recognition algorithm. It ensured the learning of all aged population, especially for children and older national. The experimental results showed that our proposed hierarchical recognition algorithm can provide higher accuracy than traditional multi-stroke recognition algorithm with more writing variability

Bendit_I/O: A System for Extending Mediated and Networked Performance Techniques to Circuit-Bent Devices

Circuit bending—the act of modifying a consumer device\u27s internal circuitry in search of new, previously-unintended responses—provides artists with a chance to subvert expectations for how a certain piece of hardware should be utilized, asking them to view everyday objects as complex electronic instruments. Along with the ability to create avant-garde instruments from unique and nostalgic sound sources, the practice of circuit bending serves as a methodology for exploring the histories of discarded objects through activism, democratization, and creative resurrection. While a rich history of circuit bending continues to inspire artists today, the recent advent of smart musical instruments and the growing number of hybrid tools available for creating connective musical experiences through networks asks us to reconsider the ways in which repurposed devices can continue to play a role in modern sonic art. Bendit_I/O serves as a synthesis of the technologies and aesthetics of the circuit bending and Networked Musical Performance (NMP) practices. The framework extends techniques native to the practices of telematic and network art to hacked hardware so that artists can design collaborative and mediated experiences that incorporate old devices into new realities. Consisting of user-friendly hardware and software components, Bendit_I/O aims to be an entry point for novice artists into both of the creative realms it brings together. This document presents details on the components of the Bendit_I/O framework along with an analysis of their use in three new compositions. Additional research serves to place the framework in historical context through literature reviews of previous work undertaken in the circuit bending and networked musical performance practices. Additionally, a case is made for performing hacked consumer hardware across a wireless network, emphasizing how extensions to current circuit bending and NMP practices provide the ability to probe our relationships with hardware through collaborative, mediated, and multimodal methods