Generating Paths through Cultural Heritage Collections

Cultural heritage collections usually organise sets of items into exhibitions or guided tours. These items are often accompanied by text that describes the theme and topic of the exhibition and provides background context and details of connections with other items. The PATHS project brings the idea of guided tours to digital library collections where a tool to create virtual paths are used to assist with navigation and provide guides on particular subjects and topics. In this paper we characterise and analyse paths of items created by users of our online system. The analysis highlights that most users spend time selecting items relevant to their chosen topic, but few users took time to add background information to the paths. In order to address this, we conducted preliminary investigations to test whether Wikipedia can be used to automatically add background text for sequences of items. In the future we would like to explore the automatic creation of full paths

User Interfaces for Patient-Centered Communication of Health Status and Care Progress

The recent trend toward patients participating in their own healthcare has opened up numerous opportunities for computing research. This dissertation focuses on how technology can foster this participation, through user interfaces to effectively communicate personal health status and care progress to hospital patients. I first characterize the design space for electronic information communication to patients through field studies conducted in multiple hospital settings. These studies utilize a combination of survey instruments, and low- and high-fidelity prototypes, including a document-editing prototype through which users can view and manage clinical data to automatically associate it with progress notes. The prototype, activeNotes, includes the first known techniques supporting clinical information requests directly within a document editor. A usage study with ICU physicians at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) substantiated our design and revealed how electronic information related to patient status and care progress is derived from a typical Electronic Health Record system. Insights gained from this study informed following studies to understand how to design abstracted, plain-language views suitable for patients. We gauged both patient and physician responses to information display prototypes deployed in patient rooms for a formative study exploring their design. Following my reports on this study, I discuss the design, development and pilot evaluations of a prototype Personal Health Record application providing live, abstracted clinical information for patients at NYP. The portal, evaluated by cardiothoracic surgery patients, is the first of its kind to allow patients to capture and monitor live data related to their care. Patient use of the portal influenced the subsequent design of tools to support users in making sense of online medication information. These tools, designed with nurses and pharmacists and evaluated by cardiothoracic surgery patients at NYP, were developed using topic modeling approaches and text analysis techniques. Embodied in a prototype called Remedy, they enable rapid filtering and comparison of medication-related search results, based on a number of website features and content topics. I conclude by discussing how findings from this series of studies can help shape the ongoing design and development of patient-centered technology

Designing a Virtual Embedded Scenario-Based Military Simulation Training Program using Educational and Design Instructional Strategies

The purpose of this dissertation in practice was to develop and implement a new training program for designers of military intelligence simulation scenarios used to train soldiers. The use of education and design instructional strategies assisted in the ability for designers to gain mastery skills in creating realistic, high-fidelity scenarios that are applied in the training process. The use of simulation scenarios to train adult learners has increased significantly with improvements in technology and its fidelity to engage learners in a realistic way. Despite these advances, the lack of effective design, implementation and analysis of military simulation training programs in the military intelligence community has led to a decrease in simulation utilization, as in the case of the organization examined in this problem of practice. The current training program\u27s increasing difficulties with consistent use by military intelligence simulation scenario designers were discovered in the results of a gap analysis conducted in 2014, prompting this design. This simulation design aimed to examine: (1) a research-based design methodology to match training requirements for the designers, (2) formative assessment of performance and (3) a research-based evaluation framework to determine the effectiveness of the new training program. For the organization\u27s training program, a Simulation-Based Embedded Training (SBET) solution using scenarios was conceived based on research grounded in cognitive theory and instructional design considerations for simulations. As a structured framework for how to design and implement an effective and sustained training program, the educational instructional design model, ADDIE, was used. This model allowed for continual flexibility in each phase to evaluate and implement changes iteratively. The instructional model and its techniques were used with fidelity, specifically for training the designers of the simulation system. Industries will continue to increase the use of simulation as advances in technologies offer more realistic, safe, and complex training environments. A detailed strategy was provided specific to the organization using a research-based instructional approach integrated into program requirements set forth by the government. This proposed solution, supported by research in the application of instructional strategies, is specific to this organization; however, the training program design differs from other high-fidelity military simulator training programs through its use of dispersed training to the simulation scenario designers using realistic scenarios to mimic the tasks that the designers themselves must create. The difference in the solution in this dissertation in practice is: 1) that the simulation scenarios are designed without the help of subject matter experts by using the embedded instructional strategies and 2) the design is to the fidelity of realism required for military intelligence training exercises

Investigation of methods for user adapted visualisation of information in a hypermedia generation system

A literature review of user interaction to support creative processes is given. A design for an authoring system for semi-automatically generated hypermedia presentations is developed. The system designed is called SampLe (a Semi-Automatic Multimedia Presentation generation Environment

From social tagging to polyrepresentation: a study of expert annotating behavior of moving images

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThis thesis investigates “nichesourcing” (De Boer, Hildebrand, et al., 2012), an emergent initiative of cultural heritage crowdsoucing in which niches of experts are involved in the annotating tasks. This initiative is studied in relation to moving image annotation, and in the context of audiovisual heritage, more specifically, within the sector of film archives. The work presents a case study of film and media scholars to investigate the types of annotations and attribute descriptions that they could eventually contribute, as well as the information needs, and seeking and searching behaviors of this group, in order to determine what the role of the different types of annotations in supporting their expert tasks would be. The study is composed of three independent but interconnected studies using a mixed methodology and an interpretive approach. It uses concepts from the information behavior discipline, and the "Integrated Information Seeking and Retrieval Framework" (IS&R) (Ingwersen and Järvelin, 2005) as guidance for the investigation. The findings show that there are several types of annotations that moving image experts could contribute to a nichesourcing initiative, of which time-based tags are only one of the possibilities. The findings also indicate that for the different foci in film and media research, in-depth indexing at the content level is only needed for supporting a specific research focus, for supporting research in other domains, or for engaging broader audiences. The main implications at the level of information infrastructure are the requirement for more varied annotating support, more interoperability among existing metadata standards and frameworks, and the need for guidelines about crowdsoucing and nichesourcing implementation in the audiovisual heritage sector. This research presents contributions to the studies of social tagging applied to moving images, to the discipline of information behavior, by proposing new concepts related to the area of use behavior, and to the concept of “polyrepresentation” (Ingwersen, 1992, 1996) applied to the humanities domain.Esta tesis investiga la iniciativa del nichesourcing (De Boer, Hildebrand, et al., 2012), como una forma de crowdsoucing en sector del patrimonio cultural, en la cuál grupos de expertos participan en las tareas de anotación de las colecciones. El ámbito de aplicación es la anotación de las imágenes en movimiento en el contexto del patrimonio audiovisual, más específicamente, en el caso de los archivos fílmicos. El trabajo presenta un estudio de caso aplicado a un dominio específico de expertos en el ámbito audiovisual: los académicos de cine y medios. El análisis se centra en dos aspectos específicos del problema: los tipos de anotaciones y atributos en las descripciones que podrían obtenerse de este nicho de expertos; y en las necesidades de información y el comportamiento informacional de dicho grupo, con el fin de determinar cuál es el rol de los diferentes tipos de anotaciones en sus tareas de investigación. La tesis se compone de tres estudios independientes e interconectados; se usa una metodología mixta e interpretativa. El marco teórico se compone de conceptos del área de estudios de comportamiento informacional (“information behavior”) y del “Marco integrado de búsqueda y recuperación de la información” ("Integrated Information Seeking and Retrieval Framework" (IS&R)) propuesto por Ingwersen y Järvelin (2005), que sirven de guía para la investigación. Los hallazgos indican que existen diversas formas de anotación de la imagen en movimiento que podrían generarse a partir de las contribuciones de expertos, de las cuáles las etiquetas a nivel de plano son sólo una de las posibilidades. Igualmente, se identificaron diversos focos de investigación en el área académica de cine y medios. La indexación detallada de contenidos sólo es requerida por uno de esos grupos y por investigadores de otras disciplinas, o como forma de involucrar audiencias más amplias. Las implicaciones más relevantes, a nivel de la infraestructura informacional, se refieren a los requisitos de soporte a formas más variadas de anotación, el requisito de mayor interoperabilidad de los estándares y marcos de metadatos, y la necesidad de publicación de guías de buenas prácticas sobre de cómo implementar iniciativas de crowdsoucing o nichesourcing en el sector del patrimonio audiovisual. Este trabajo presenta aportes a la investigación sobre el etiquetado social aplicado a las imágenes en movimiento, a la disciplina de estudios del comportamiento informacional, a la que se proponen nuevos conceptos relacionados con el área de uso de la información, y al concepto de “poli-representación” (Ingwersen, 1992, 1996) en las disciplinas humanísticas.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Documentación: Archivos y Bibliotecas en el Entorno DigitalPresidente: Peter Emil Rerup Ingwersen.- Secretario: Antonio Hernández Pérez.- Vocal: Nils Phar

AXMEDIS 2008

The AXMEDIS International Conference series aims to explore all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, protection and rights management, to address the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, impacts and exploitation. The AXMEDIS events offer venues for exchanging concepts, requirements, prototypes, research ideas, and findings which could contribute to academic research and also benefit business and industrial communities. In the Internet as well as in the digital era, cross-media production and distribution represent key developments and innovations that are fostered by emergent technologies to ensure better value for money while optimising productivity and market coverage