Enhancing the museum experience with a sustainable solution based on contextual information obtained from an on-line analysis of users’ behaviour

Human computer interaction has evolved in the last years in order to enhance users’ experiences and provide more intuitive and usable systems. A major leap through in this scenario is obtained by embedding, in the physical environment, sensors capable of detecting and processing users’ context (position, pose, gaze, ...). Feeded by the so collected information flows, user interface paradigms may shift from stereotyped gestures on physical devices, to more direct and intuitive ones that reduce the semantic gap between the action and the corresponding system reaction or even anticipate the user’s needs, thus limiting the overall learning effort and increasing user satisfaction. In order to make this process effective, the context of the user (i.e. where s/he is, what is s/he doing, who s/he is, what are her/his preferences and also actual perception and needs) must be properly understood. While collecting data on some aspects can be easy, interpreting them all in a meaningful way in order to improve the overall user experience is much harder. This is more evident when we consider informal learning environments like museums, i.e. places that are designed to elicit visitor response towards the artifacts on display and the cultural themes proposed. In such a situation, in fact, the system should adapt to the attention paid by the user choosing the appropriate content for the user’s purposes, presenting an intuitive interface to navigate it. My research goal is focused on collecting, in a simple,unobtrusive, and sustainable way, contextual information about the visitors with the purpose of creating more engaging and personalized experiences

Birch Hill Park: A Case Study of Interpretive Planning

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Parks and Recreation Department is responsible for the planning, acquisition, development, improvement, and maintenance of lands and facilities to meet the community's needs for park and open space lands in accordance with established standards. 1 Current department emphasis is on sports facilities and programs. Some small neighborhood parks and the Growden Park and Picnic Area are the only significantly developed areas in which organized sports are not emphasized. Birch Hill Park was acquired to expand the spectrum of recreational resources and opportunities available to borough residents. Cross-country skiing, both competitive and recreational, is an important winter activity, but the area's size and its natural environment provide for a variety of other uses. The park has a summer youth camp, and planned developments will enhance the opportunities for visitors of all ages to picnic, hike, and study nature. This paper presents a direct contribution to the diversification of the borough's recreational program by highlighting the interpretive resources and opportunities of the park and by making specific recommendations for the implementation of an interpretive program. The interpretive plan proposed here can be integrated with the comprehensive development planning for Birch Hill Park now underway at the Parks and Recreation Department. Preliminary research for this study was done as a University of Alaska class project in the spring semester of 1976. The students in LR 493, Interpretive Services, developed basic information on the natural and cultural resources of Birch Hill and its surrounding region. They also identified policy gaps and provided general guidance for interpretation in the park.2 The plan presented here is a fo llow-up to that work. Additional fieldwork and library research have been done to supplement the earlier effort, and the implementation aspects have been made more specific with regard to the trail and visitor center recommendations. The process followed in this study is adapted from Perry J. Brown's Procedures for Developing an Interpretive Master Plan

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Conducting visitor studies using smartphone-based location sensing

Visitor studies explore human experiences within museums, cultural heritage sites, and other informal learning settings to inform decisions. Smartphones offer novel opportunities for extending the depth and breadth of visitor studies while considerably reducing their cost and their demands on specialist human resources. By enabling the collection of significantly higher volumes of data, they also make possible the application of advanced machine-learning and visualization techniques, potentially leading to the discovery of new patterns and behaviors that cannot be captured by simple descriptive statistics. In this article, we present a principled approach to the use of smartphones for visitor studies, in particular proposing a structured methodology and associated methods that enable its effective use in this context. We discuss specific methodological considerations that have to be addressed for effective data collection, preprocessing, and analysis and identify the limitations in the applicability of these tools using family visits to the London Zoo as a case study. We conclude with a discussion of the wider opportunities afforded by the introduction of smartphones and related technologies and outline the steps toward establishing them as a standard tool for visitor studies

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Tangible Data Souvenirs as a Bridge between a Physical Museum Visit and Online Digital Experience

This paper presents the design, implementation, use and evaluation of a tangible data souvenir for an interactive museum exhibition. We define a data souvenir as the materialisation of the personal visiting experience: a data souvenir is dynamically created on the basis of data recorded throughout the visit and therefore captures and represents the experience as lived. The souvenir provides visitors with a memento of their visit and acts as a gateway to further online content. A step further is to enable visitors to contribute, in other words the data souvenir can become a means to collect visitor-generated content. We discuss the rationale behind the use of a data souvenir, the design process and resulting artefacts, and the implementation of both the data souvenir and online content system. Finally we examine the installation of the data souvenirs as part of a long-lasting exhibition: the use of this souvenir by visitors has been logged over seven months and issues around the gathering of user-generated content in such a way are discussed. Keywords: Tangible interaction; data souvenir; museums; user-generated content

Interacting with heritage: On the use and potential of IoT within the cultural heritage sector

This paper discusses the potential for the use of IoT technologies within cultural heritage, including the creation of new interactive experiences, visit personalisation, visitor data analysis, connected and distributed museum visits and the provision of pre- and post-visit experiences. We argue that cultural heritage offers a key opportunity for the development and deployment of new IoT systems, with potential benefits both for the cultural heritage domain and the IoT community. We present a number of areas of potential work for IoT researchers that are applicable to the heritage domain and to the broader IoT context, including challenges around poor connectivity, identifying and tracking visitors, and providing systems that are easily installed configured and maintained in environments with minimal infrastructure and poor technical support

Improving Visitor Communications in Grand Canyon National Park

Cooperative National Park Resources Study Unit of Arizona, a special report, v no. 4, improving viistor communciation in Grand Canyon National Par