Smart Signs: Showing the way in Smart Surroundings

This paper presents a context-aware guidance and messaging system for large buildings and surrounding venues. Smart Signs are a new type of electronic door- and way-sign based on wireless sensor networks. Smart Signs present in-situ personalized guidance and messages, are ubiquitous, and easy to understand. They combine the easiness of use of traditional static signs with the flexibility and reactiveness of navigation systems. The Smart Signs system uses context information such as user’s mobility limitations, the weather, and possible emergency situations to improve guidance and messaging. Minimal infrastructure requirements and a simple deployment tool make it feasible to easily deploy a Smart Signs system on demand. An important design issue of the Smart Signs system is privacy: the system secures communication links, does not track users, allow almost complete anonymous use, and prevent the system to be used as a tool for spying on users

Digital storytelling and social interaction in cultural heritage - an approach for sites with reduced connectivity

Οι ηχογραφημένες ξεναγήσεις έχουν διαδραματίσει σημαντικό ρόλο σε μουσεία και σε χώρους πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς με μακρά ιστορία και ποικίλες εφαρμογές. Με την πάροδο των ετών και καθώς οι κινητές συσκευές έγιναν πιο διαδεδομένες, αναπάντεχα προκάλεσαν τεχνολογικές εξελίξεις σε αυτό το πλαίσιο χρήσης. Παραδοσιακά, οι ηχογραφημένες ξεναγήσεις καθώς και εν γένει οι αφηγήσεις μέσω κινητών συσκευών, αποτελούσαν εμπειρίες για μεμονωμένους χρήστες. Ωστόσο, λαμβάνοντας υπ' όψιν πως οι επισκέψεις σε μουσεία και χώρους πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς, είναι στις περισσότερες περιπτώσεις, κοινωνικής φύσεως, έχει αναπτυχθεί πληθώρα ερευνητικών εφαρμογών που αποπειρώνται να εισάγουν με ποικίλους τρόπους στοιχεία κοινωνικής αλληλεπίδρασης μεταξύ των χρηστών. Στα πλαίσια αυτής της εργασίας επιχειρήσαμε να υποστηρίξουμε τεχνολογικά υποβοηθούμενες κοινωνικές αλληλεπιδράσεις για χρηστών που βρίσκονται στον ίδιο χώρο στα πλαίσια μιας ψηφιακής εμπειρίας πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς. Σε αυτόν τον τύπο εμπειρίας, επιτρέπεται στους χρήστες να προχωρήσουν σε τμήματα της εμπειρίας με τον δικό τους ρυθμό, έχοντας αποκλειστικό έλεγχο της κινητής συσκευής τους. Σε συγκεκριμένα σημεία της εμπειρίας, οι χρήστες καλούνται να αλληλεπιδράσουν μεταξύ τους, είτε μέσω θεματικών διαλόγων σχετιζόμενων με την εμπειρία, είτε μέσω κάποιας άλλης κοινής δραστηριότητας. Ένα από τα κύρια ζητήματα που αντιμετωπίσαμε ήταν η επικοινωνία μεταξύ κινητών συσκευών στον ίδιο χώρο έπρεπε να πραγματοποιηθεί αποκεντρωμένα χωρίς ένα κεντρικό κόμβο συντονισμού. Αυτή η απαίτηση πηγάζει από το γεγονός ότι οι περισσότεροι χώροι πολιτισμικής κληρονομιάς δεν έχουν την απαραίτητη αξιόπιστη υποδομή για να υποστηρίξουν συνδεσιμότητα οποιασδήποτε μορφής. Για το σκοπό αυτό, επεκτείνουμε το Story Maker, ένα λογισμικό για τη δημιουργία διαδραστικών ψηφιακών αφηγήσεων με σκοπό την υποστήριξη συνεργατικών εμπειριών. Τα προβλήματα τα οποία κληθήκαμε να αντιμετωπίσουμε ήταν: α) να σχεδιάσουμε ένα σύστημα που θα λειτουργεί αποκεντρωμένα και β) να σχεδιάσουμε ένα σύστημα συνεργατικών εμπειριών το οποίο να υποστηρίζει τόσο το συγχρονισμό μεταξύ κινητών συσκευών όσο και διαφορετικούς τύπους συνεργατικών δραστηριοτήτων. Για να αξιολογήσουμε την αποτελεσματικότητα του συστήματος αυτού, διεξήγαμε μια μελέτη με δώδεκα συμμετέχοντες, πραγματοποιηθήσα στο Τμήμα Πληροφορικής και Τηλεπικοινωνιών του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών. Τα αποτελέσματα της αξιολόγησης επιβεβαιώνουν την αποτελεσματικότητα της προσέγγισης μας για την κοινωνική αλληλεπίδραση σε συνδυασμό με μια αποκεντρωμένη προσέγγιση στη συνδεσιμότητα δικτύου. Οι χρήστες τάχθηκαν υπέρ του τεχνολογικά υποβοηθούμενου συγχρονισμού, δηλώνοντας πως η εμπειρία δεν θα ήταν εφικτή χωρίς αυτόν, ενώ τους ώθησε να διατηρήσουν την εστίασή τους στην πλοκή, δημιουργώντας ταυτόχρονα ένα αίσθημα ευθύνης απέναντι στους συνεργάτες τους. Δεδομένου πως τα σημεία συγχρονισμού και κοινωνικής αλληλεπίδρασης βασίζονται στη χρήση ετικετών και συνθηκών καθώς επίσης πως δεν απαιτούνται δεξιότητες προγραμματισμού, πιστεύουμε πως με σύντομη εκπαίδευση, οι συγγραφείς θα είναι σε θέση να χρησιμοποιήσουν το εργαλείο για τη δημιουργία ομαδικών ψηφιακών αφηγήσεων. Τέλος, ο σχεδιασμός μας είναι επεκτάσιμος, εκθέτοντας προγραμματιστικά άγκιστρα που επιτρέπουν την εύκολη επέκταση οθονών περιεχομένου του Story Maker με συνεργατικές λειτουργίες.Audio guides have played a significant role in museums and heritage sites with a very long history and varied applications. Over the years, as mobile devices gradually became more pervasive, there has been an evolution in their use in this context. Traditionally, audio guides and mobile mediated narratives, in general, have been a single user experience. However, as a museum visit is, in most cases, social in nature, different experimental applications attempt to implement sociality in a variety of experience designs for museums and heritage sites. In this work, we seek to support digitally-mediated social interaction for co-located users experiencing digital storytelling in a cultural heritage context. In this experience type, the users are allowed to proceed in parts of the experience at their own pace within the storyline, controlling their own, individual mobile device. At specific points, they are asked to interact with each other, either engaging in conversation concerning the story themes or another type of shared activity. One major aspect to be addressed is that communication across devices that are co-located should take place in a decentralized manner without requiring a single point of coordination. This requirement stems from the fact that most cultural sites lack the reliable infrastructure to support network connectivity of any kind. To that end, we extend Story Maker, a framework that provides content creation capabilities for single-user interactive digital narratives to support collaborative multi-user experiences. In the process we had to address the following problems: a) design a system to work in a decentralized manner and b) design the collaborative experience framework to support device synchronization and different types of collaborative activities. To evaluate the effectiveness of our framework, we performed a study with twelve participants, held at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The evaluation results confirmed the effectiveness of our implementation for social interaction coupled with a decentralized approach to network connectivity. The users argued in favour of system based synchronization, stating that the experience would not be possible without it and that it helped them keep their focus on the plot while also creating a sense of responsibility towards their partners. Taking into account that the implementation of synchronization and the social interaction points is based on the use of tags and conditions and does not require programming skills, we are confident that with brief training, authors would be able to use the tool to create group digital storytelling activities. Finally, our design, by exposing programming hooks, enables developers to easily extend the Story Maker content screens with collaborative features

Promoting Informal Learning Using a Context-Sensitive Recommendation Algorithm For a QRCode-based Visual Tagging System

Structured Abstract Context: Previous work in the educational field has demonstrated that Informal Learning is an effective way to learn. Due to its casual nature it is often difficult for academic institutions to leverage this method of learning as part of a typical curriculum. Aim: This study planned to determine whether Informal Learning could be encouraged amongst learners at Durham University using an object tagging system and a context-sensitive recommendation algorithm. Method: This study creates a visual tagging system using a type of two-dimensional barcode called the QR Code and describes a tool designed to allow learners to use these ‘tags’ to learn about objects in a physical space. Information about objects features audio media as well as textual descriptions to make information appealing. A collaboratively-filtered, user-based recommendation algorithm uses elements of a learner’s context, namely their university records, physical location and data on the activities of users similar to them to create a top-N ranked list of objects that they may find interesting. The tool is evaluated in a case study with thirty (n=30) participants taking part in a task in a public space within Durham University. The evaluation uses quantitative and qualititative data to make conclusions as to the use of the proposed tool for individuals who wish to learn informally. Results: A majority of learners found learning about the objects around them to be an interesting practice. The recommendation system fulfilled its purpose and learners indicated that they would travel a significant distance to view objects that were presented to them. The addition of audio clips to largely textual information did not serve to increase learner interest and the implementation of this part of the system is examined in detail. Additionally there was found to be no apparent correlation between prior computer usage and the ability to comprehend an informal learning tool such as the one described. Conclusion: Context-sensitive, mobile tools are valuable for motivating Informal Learning. Interaction with tagged objects outside of the experimental setting indicates significant learner interest even from those individuals that did not participate in the study. Learners that did participate in the experiment gained a better understanding of the world around them than they would have without the tool and would use such software again in the future

Design Criteria for Location-aware, Indoor, PDA Applications

The design of interactive systems has to take into account the context of use. In this paper we discuss the design criteria to use when developing locationaware, indoor, PDA applications. We analyse some of the technologies currently available for this purpose and examine how to provide users with location-dependent information. The discussion of such criteria is based on our experience in the development of an interactive guide for museum visitors

Designing an architecture for secure sharing of personal health records : a case of developing countries

Includes bibliographical references.While there has been an increase in the design and development of Personal Health Record (PHR) systems in the developed world, little has been done to explore the utility of these systems in the developing world. Despite the usual problems of poor infrastructure, PHR systems designed for the developing world need to conform to users with different models of security and literacy than those designed for developed world. This study investigated a PHR system distributed across mobile devices with a security model and an interface that supports the usage and concerns of low literacy users in developing countries. The main question addressed in this study is: “Can personal health records be stored securely and usefully on mobile phones?” In this study, mobile phones were integrated into the PHR architecture that we/I designed because the literature reveals that the majority of the population in developing countries possess mobile phones. Additionally, mobile phones are very flexible and cost efficient devices that offer adequate storage and computing capabilities to users for typically communication operations. However, it is also worth noting that, mobile phones generally do not provide sufficient security mechanisms to protect the user data from unauthorized access

Modeling and Implementation of Wireless Sensor Networks for Logistics Applications

Logistics has experienced a long time of developments and improvements based on the advanced vehicle technologies, transportation systems, traffic network extension and logistics processes. In the last decades, the complexity has increased significantly and this has created complex logistics networks over multiple continents. Because of the close cooperation, these logistics networks are highly dependent on each other in sharing and processing the logistics information. Every customer has many suppliers and vice versa. The conventional centralized control continues but reaches some limitations such as the different distribution of suppliers, the complexity and flexibility of processing orders or the dynamics of the logistic objects. In order to overcome these disadvantages, the paradigm of autonomous logistics is proposed and promises a better technical solution for current logistics systems. In autonomous logistics, the decision making is shifted toward the logistic objects which are defined as material items (e.g., vehicles, containers) or immaterial items (e.g., customer orders) of a networked logistics system. These objects have the ability to interact with each other and make decisions according to their own objectives. In the technical aspect, with the rapid development of innovative sensor technology, namely Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), each element in the network can self-organize and interact with other elements for information transmission. The attachment of an electronic sensor element into a logistic object will create an autonomous environment in both the communication and the logistic domain. With this idea, the requirements of logistics can be fulfilled; for example, the monitoring data can be precise, comprehensive and timely. In addition, the goods flow management can be transferred to the information logistic object management, which is easier by the help of information technologies. However, in order to transmit information between these logistic objects, one requirement is that a routing protocol is necessary. The Opportunistic relative Distance-Enabled Uni-cast Routing (ODEUR ) protocol which is proposed and investigated in this thesis shows that it can be used in autonomous environments like autonomous logistics. Moreover, the support of mobility, multiple sinks and auto-connection in this protocol enhances the dynamics of logistic objects. With a general model which covers a range from low-level issues to high-level protocols, many services such as real time monitoring of environmental conditions, context-aware applications and localization make the logistic objects (embedded with sensor equipment) more advanced in information communication and data processing. The distributed management service in each sensor node allows the flexible configuration of logistic items at any time during the transportation. All of these integrated features introduce a new technical solution for smart logistic items and intelligent transportation systems. In parallel, a management system, WSN data Collection and Management System (WiSeCoMaSys), is designed to interact with the deployed Wireless Sensor Networks. This tool allows the user to easily manipulate the sensor networks remotely. With its rich set of features such as real time data monitoring, data analysis and visualization, per-node management, and alerts, this tool helps both developers and users in the design and deployment of a sensor network. In addition, an analytical model is developed for comparison with the results from simulations and experiments. Focusing on the use of probability theory to model the network links, this model considers several important factors such as packet reception rate and network traffic which are used in the simulation and experiment parts. Moreover, the comparison between simulation, experiment and analytical results is also carried out to estimate the accuracy of the design and make several improvements of the simulation accuracy. Finally, all of the above parts are integrated in one unique system. This system is verified by both simulations in logistic scenarios (e.g., harbors, warehouses and containers) and experiments. The results show that the proposed model and protocol have a good packet delivery rate, little memory requirements and low delay. Accordingly, this system design is practical and applicable in logistics

Virtual Heritage: new technologies for edutainment

Cultural heritage represents an enormous amount of information and knowledge. Accessing this treasure chest allows not only to discover the legacy of physical and intangible attributes of the past but also to provide a better understanding of the present. Museums and cultural institutions have to face the problem of providing access to and communicating these cultural contents to a wide and assorted audience, meeting the expectations and interests of the reference end-users and relying on the most appropriate tools available. Given the large amount of existing tangible and intangible heritage, artistic, historical and cultural contents, what can be done to preserve and properly disseminate their heritage significance? How can these items be disseminated in the proper way to the public, taking into account their enormous heterogeneity? Answering this question requires to deal as well with another aspect of the problem: the evolution of culture, literacy and society during the last decades of 20th century. To reflect such transformations, this period witnessed a shift in the museum’s focus from the aesthetic value of museum artifacts to the historical and artistic information they encompass, and a change into the museums’ role from a mere "container" of cultural objects to a "narrative space" able to explain, describe, and revive the historical material in order to attract and entertain visitors. These developments require creating novel exhibits, able to tell stories about the objects and enabling visitors to construct semantic meanings around them. The objective that museums presently pursue is reflected by the concept of Edutainment, Education + Entertainment. Nowadays, visitors are not satisfied with ‘learning something’, but would rather engage in an ‘experience of learning’, or ‘learning for fun’, being active actors and players in their own cultural experience. As a result, institutions are faced with several new problems, like the need to communicate with people from different age groups and different cultural backgrounds, the change in people attitude due to the massive and unexpected diffusion of technology into everyday life, the need to design the visit by a personal point of view, leading to a high level of customization that allows visitors to shape their path according to their characteristics and interests. In order to cope with these issues, I investigated several approaches. In particular, I focused on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE): real-time interactive virtual environments where visitors can experience a journey through time and space, being immersed into the original historical, cultural and artistic context of the work of arts on display. VLE can strongly help archivists and exhibit designers, allowing to create new interesting and captivating ways to present cultural materials. In this dissertation I will tackle many of the different dimensions related to the creation of a cultural virtual experience. During my research project, the entire pipeline involved into the development and deployment of VLE has been investigated. The approach followed was to analyze in details the main sub-problems to face, in order to better focus on specific issues. Therefore, I first analyzed different approaches to an effective recreation of the historical and cultural context of heritage contents, which is ultimately aimed at an effective transfer of knowledge to the end-users. In particular, I identified the enhancement of the users’ sense of presence in VLE as one of the main tools to reach this objective. Presence is generally expressed as the perception of 'being there', i.e. the subjective belief of users that they are in a certain place, even if they know that the experience is mediated by the computer. Presence is related to the number of senses involved by the VLE and to the quality of the sensorial stimuli. But in a cultural scenario, this is not sufficient as the cultural presence plays a relevant role. Cultural presence is not just a feeling of 'being there' but of being - not only physically, but also socially, culturally - 'there and then'. In other words, the VLE must be able to transfer not only the appearance, but also all the significance and characteristics of the context that makes it a place and both the environment and the context become tools capable of transferring the cultural significance of a historic place. The attention that users pay to the mediated environment is another aspect that contributes to presence. Attention is related to users’ focalization and concentration and to their interests. Thus, in order to improve the involvement and capture the attention of users, I investigated in my work the adoption of narratives and storytelling experiences, which can help people making sense of history and culture, and of gamification approaches, which explore the use of game thinking and game mechanics in cultural contexts, thus engaging users while disseminating cultural contents and, why not?, letting them have fun during this process. Another dimension related to the effectiveness of any VLE is also the quality of the user experience (UX). User interaction, with both the virtual environment and its digital contents, is one of the main elements affecting UX. With respect to this I focused on one of the most recent and promising approaches: the natural interaction, which is based on the idea that persons need to interact with technology in the same way they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life. Then, I focused on the problem of presenting, displaying and communicating contents. VLE represent an ideal presentation layer, being multiplatform hypermedia applications where users are free to interact with the virtual reconstructions by choosing their own visiting path. Cultural items, embedded into the environment, can be accessed by users according to their own curiosity and interests, with the support of narrative structures, which can guide them through the exploration of the virtual spaces, and conceptual maps, which help building meaningful connections between cultural items. Thus, VLE environments can even be seen as visual interfaces to DBs of cultural contents. Users can navigate the VE as if they were browsing the DB contents, exploiting both text-based queries and visual-based queries, provided by the re-contextualization of the objects into their original spaces, whose virtual exploration can provide new insights on specific elements and improve the awareness of relationships between objects in the database. Finally, I have explored the mobile dimension, which became absolutely relevant in the last period. Nowadays, off-the-shelf consumer devices as smartphones and tablets guarantees amazing computing capabilities, support for rich multimedia contents, geo-localization and high network bandwidth. Thus, mobile devices can support users in mobility and detect the user context, thus allowing to develop a plethora of location-based services, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits and cultural or tourist sites according to visitors’ personal interest and curiosity

Internet on mobiles: evolution of usability and user experience

The mobile Internet is no longer a new phenomenon; the first mobile devices supporting web access were introduced over 10 years ago. During the past ten years technology and business infrastructure have evolved and the number of mobile Internet users has increased all over the world. Service user interface, technology and business infrastructure have built a framework for service adaptation: they can act as enablers or as barriers. Users evaluate how the new technology adds value to their life based on multiple factors. This dissertation has its focus in the area of human-computer interaction research and practices. The overall goal of my research has been to improve the usability and the user experience of mobile Internet services. My research has sought answers to questions relevant in service development process. Questions have varied during the years, the main question being: How to design and create mobile Internet services that people can use and want to use? I have sought answers mostly from a human factors perspective, but have also taken the elements form technology and business infrastructure into consideration. In order to answer the questions raised in service development projects, we have investigated the mobile Internet services in the laboratory and in the field. My research has been conducted in various countries in 3 continents: Asia, Europe and North America. These studies revealed differences in mobile Internet use in different countries and between user groups. Studies in this dissertation were conducted between years 1998 and 2007 and show how questions and research methods have evolved during the time. Good service creation requires that all three factors: technology, business infrastructure and users are taken in consideration. When using knowledge on users in decision making, it is important to understand that the different phases of the service development cycle require the different kind of information on users. It is not enough to know about the users, the knowledge about users has to be transferred into decisions. The service has to be easy to use so that people can use it. This is related to usability. Usability is a very important factor in service adoption, but it is not enough. The service has to have relevant content from user perspective. The content is the reason why people want to use the service. In addition to the content and the ease of use, people evaluate the goodness of the service based on many other aspects: the cost, the availability and the reliability of the system for example. A good service is worth trying and after the first experience, is it worth using. These aspects are considered to influence the 'user experience' of the system. In this work I use lexical analysis to evaluate how the words "usability" and "user experience" are used in mobile HCI conference papers during the past 10 years. The use of both words has increased during the period and reflects the evolution of research questions and methodology over time

Etude empirique de l'interaction multimodale mobile en situation naturelle

Ubiquity of mobile interactive devices either in professional, cultural or domestic domain constitutes a new research perspective to both individual and cooperative usage of new communication technologies. Mobile technologies rise, among others, new questioning about mobile usability specific issues, adapted methodologies and field data collection, identification of relevant contextual factors for mobile systems design, superimposition of interaction spaces. We believe that mobility is a new interaction paradigm carrying potential contextual variations, preventing traditional direct manipulation from being the most appropriate interaction style without serious adaptation because it currently requires a high level of visual attention . In this PhD, we first present a review of current knowledge concerning Context Aware Computing (CAC) as well as mobile and multimodal interaction. We then present an empirical study of a mobile multimodal application in the context of a situated collaborative quiz-answering task. Based on quantitative and qualitative results, our research first describes global and individual usage of the available modalities (tactile and vocal). In a second time, we study the influence of some identified internal and external contextual factors on the modalities selection,. For instance, we examinate the impact of factors such as noise context, social context or history of the interaction on the modalities usage. A third part of our results highlights the relation between users choice of a modality depending on the attentional resources required by the mobile interaction. All along the quantitative results, an extensive analysis of qualitative data such as user‘s verbalisation during self confrontation sessions, or activity chronicles examination, allowed us to argue and explain some modality choices and helped us identify some new factors taken into account by the users. Finally, we use these results to propose some models for mobile multimodal applications, as well as some criteria and recommendations for their design.L'ubiquité des dispositifs interactifs mobiles dans les sphères professionnelles, culturelles et domestiques constitue une occasion d'ouverture de nouveaux champs de recherche dans le domaine de l'étude des usages individuels et coopératifs des Nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication (NTICs). Les technologies mobiles amènent notamment à renouveler les points de vue sur des questions telles que, les problèmes d'utilisabilité spécifiques posés par la mobilité, les méthodes et les dispositifs de recueil de données, la question de l'identification des facteurs contextuels pertinents pour la conception de systèmes mobiles, la superposition des espaces d'interaction. De ce point de vue, nous posons que la mobilité constitue un nouveau paradigme d'interaction facteur potentiel de variations contextuelles pour lequel le style d'interaction de manipulation directe n'est pas forcément le plus approprié sans des adaptations fortes. Dans cette thèse, nous nous attachons, après avoir posé les bases théoriques concernant le Context Aware Computing (CAC), l'interaction mobile, et multimodale, à étudier empiriquement les usages d'une application multimodale mobile.dans le contexte d'un jeu collaboratif en mobilité. Dans un premier temps, des résultats quantitatifs permettent d'aborder une description des usages globaux et intra individuels des modalités, puis décrivent l'influence d'un certain nombre de facteurs contextuels (internes ou externes) influençant les choix d'usage des modalités, tels que le contexte sonore, social ou encore l'historique de l'interaction. Dans un second temps, une analyse plus fine de données qualitatives telles que les verbalisations des utilisateurs ou l'examen de chroniques d'activités, permet d‘expliquer en partie ces choix d'usages mais également d'identifier de nouveaux facteurs pris en compte par les sujets. Nous nous servons de ces résultats pour proposer des modèles et des recommendations pour la conception d'interfaces multimodales mobiles