Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Toward media collection-based storytelling

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-118).Life is filled with stories. Modern technologies enable us to document and share life events with various kinds of media, such as photos, videos, etc. But people still find it time-consuming to select and arrange media fragments to create coherent and engaging narratives. This thesis proposes a novel storytelling system called Storied Navigation, which lets users assemble a sequence of video clips based on their roles in telling a story, rather than solely by explicit start and end times. Storied Navigation uses textual annotations expressed in unconstrained natural language, using parsing and Commonsense reasoning to deduce possible connections between the narrative intent of the storyteller, and descriptions of events and characters in the video. It helps users increase their familiarity with a documentary video corpus. It helps them develop story threads by prompting them with recommendations of alternatives as well as possible continuations for each selected video clip. We view it as a promising first step towards transforming today's fragmented media production experience into an enjoyable, integrated storytelling activity.Edward Yu-Te Chen.S.M

Emotion-driven interactive storytelling.

Interactive storytelling has attracted plenty of research interest in recent years. Most current interactive storytelling systems follow a goal-oriented approach to story representation, i.e. the user is engaged with the story through fulfilling a number of goals rather than empathising with the characters and experiencing anenriched emotional experience (Pizzi and Cavazza 2007). This fails to satisfy potential users who are oriented to traditional media, such as movies (Louchart et al. 2008) and demographic groups who are interested in attractive and challenging stories (Duh et al. 2010). Given this consideration, an emotion-driven interactive storytelling approach is proposed in this research. In contrast to the goal-oriented interactive storytelling approach, emotion-driven interactive storytelling attempts to create an engaging emotional experience, and involve the user’s emotion with the characters. More importantly, the user’s emotions, evoked by empathising with the characters, determine the character’s behaviours and therefore have an impact on the whole storyline. In this sense, emotions, as a driving force, directly and explicitly contribute to storytelling and the user experience. An interactive video was made by re-editing existing TV material to interpret the concept of emotion-driven interactive storytelling. The examination of user experience of playing this interactive video revealed that non-gamers were more likely to be emotionally involved with the interactive video and empathise with the character. Participants in this group also exhibited higher enjoyment and engagement than gamers. In addition, females were found more likely to empathise with the character and satisfy with the storyline. However because the TV material used to make the interactive video was female-oriented, males failed to enjoy and engage themselves as much as females. But it is important to note that in comparison to males’ previous experience of watching TV Ugly Betty, emotion-driven interactive storytelling increased their enjoyment and engagement. Therefore, emotion-driven interactive storytelling enriches the approach to developing interactive storytelling systems and has the potential to provide an engaging user experience to some types of users. Future research possibilities are discussed with respect to a wider population and research where materials suitable for both genders are presented

Stories within Immersive Virtual Environments

How can we use immersive and interactive technologies to portray stories? How can we take advantage of the fact that within immersive virtual environments people tend to respond realistically to virtual situations and events to develop narrative content? Stories in such a media would allow the participant to contribute to the story and interact with the virtual characters while the narrative plot would not change, or change only up to how it was decided a priori. Participants in such a narrative would be able to freely interact within the virtual environments and yet still be aware of the main trust of the stories presented. How can we preserve the ‘respond as if it is real’ phenomenon induced by these technologies, but also develop an unfolding plot in this environment? In other words, can we develop a story, conserving the structure, its psychological and cultural richness and the emotional and cognitive involvement it supposes, in an interactive and immersive audiovisual space? In recent years Virtual Reality therapy has shown that an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) with a predetermined plot can be experienced as an interactive narrative. For example, in the context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment, the reactions of the participants and the therapeutic impact suggest that an IVE is a qualitatively different experience than classical audiovisual content. However, the methods to develop such kind of content are not systematic, and the consistency of the experience is only granted by a therapist or operator controlling in real time the unfolding narrative. Can a story with a strong classical plot be rendered in an automated and interactive immersive virtual environment? The thesis developed through this document is that it is possible. Specifically the thesis is that this can be achieved through two principles of interaction that we call ‘ATP’ and ‘Substitution’. ATP stands for ‘Advance The Plot’, and it is an underlying goal of the system to always find the best action possible in any given context that will advance the state of the story being expressed. The second principle, Substitution, states that the human participant in an immersive interactive story can assume the role of any character or, what is equivalent, that if he does not do what the system expects him to do, a virtual character will do it instead. To implement such principles, a story cognitive model named Trama is proposed. The purpose of such a story model is to give artificial agents a guide to decide what to do in an interactive situation in such a way that the human participant has the impression of interacting within one or more narrative plots. To validate such method, three experiments address the main assumptions of the approach.The first one is concerned with whether people interact with virtual characters in a similar way they do with real people, analysing this in a particular aspect of interpersonal communication, namely interpersonal distances. The second assesses whether people identify with their virtual bodies, which is one of the basic assumptions underlying the principles of interaction proposed. The third experiment shows that the story model allows to implement stories in such a way that people can interact within an immersive virtual environment while conserving the impression there is a narrative plot, and that they have assumed a particular role in it. In addition to the experiments, we explore whether the formalism developed within the Trama model captures some aspects of the important role that stories have in cognitive development.Podem emprar la realitat virtual immersiva per contar històries? Com podem aprofitar el fet que dins dels entorns virtuals immersius les persones tendeixen a respondre de manera realista a les situacions i esdeveniments virtuals per desenvolupar històries? Els participants en aquest tipus de narrativa podrien interactuar lliurement amb els entorns virtuals i no obstant això experimentarien les històries presentades com a plausibles i consistents. Una història en aquest medi audiovisual permetria als participants interactuar amb els personatges virtuals i contribuir activament als esdeveniments escenificats en l’entorn virtual. Malgrat això, la trama establerta a priori no canviaria, o canviaria només dins els marges establerts per l’autor. Com podem preservar el fet que hom tendeix a "respondre com si fos real" induït per aquestes tecnologies mentre desenvolupem una trama en aquests entorns? En altres paraules, podem desenvolupar una història conservant-ne l’estructura, la riquesa cultural i psicològica i la implicació emocional i cognitiva que suposa, en una realitat virtual immersiva i interactiva? Recentment la teràpia de realitat virtual ha mostrat que un entorn virtual amb un guió preestablert pot ser percebut com una narració interactiva. Per exemple, en el context del tractament de Trastorns per Estrès Postraumàtic, les reaccions i impactes terapèutics suggereixen que provoca una sensació de realitat que en fa una experiència qualitativament diferent als continguts audiovisuals clàssics. No obstant això, la consistència de l’experiència tan sols pot ser garantida si un terapeuta o operador controla en temps real el flux dels esdeveniments constituint el guió narratiu. Podem representar un guió clàssic en un entorn virtual automatitzat? La tesi principal d’aquest treball és que és possible. En concret, la tesi és que això es pot aconseguir a través de dos principis d’interacció que anomenem ‘ATP’ i ‘Substitució’. ATP significa ‘avançar en la trama’ (Advance The Plot ), i és un objectiu inherent en el sistema per trobar, en qualsevol context, la millor acció possible que farà avançar la història contada. El segon principi, Substitució, formalitza el fet que el participant humà en una trama interactiva pot assumir el paper de qualsevol personatge o, el que és equivalent, que si no fa el que el sistema espera que faci, un personatge virtual ho farà en el seu lloc. Per posar en pràctica aquests principis, he introduït un model cognitiu d’història anomenat Trama. La funció d’aquest model és donar als agents artificials una guia per decidir què fer en una situació interactiva, de manera que el participant humà té la impressió d’interactuar dins d’un o més guions narratius. Introdueixo 3 experiments per abordar els principals supòsits d’aquest mètode. El primer avalua si les persones interactuen amb personatges virtuals de manera similar que fan amb persones reals en un aspecte particular de la comunicació interpersonal: les distàncies interpersonals. El segon estudia fins a quin punt hom s’identifica amb el seu cos virtual, un dels supòsits bàsics subjacents als principis d’interacció proposats. El tercer experiment mostra que el model Trama permet implementar les històries de tal manera que les persones poden interactuar en un entorn virtual immersiu tot conservant la impressió que participen en un guió narratiu subjacent on hi assumeixen un rol concret. També exploro si el formalisme desenvolupat reflecteix o prediu algunes de les moltes funcions que les històries tenen en el desenvolupament cognitiu