Ontology-based user modeling in an augmented audio reality system for museums

Ubiquitous computing is a challenging area that allows us to further our understanding and techniques of context-aware and adaptive systems. Among the challenges is the general problem of capturing the larger context in interaction from the perspective of user modeling and human–computer interaction (HCI). The imperative to address this issue is great considering the emergence of ubiquitous and mobile computing environments. This paper provides an account of our addressing the specific problem of supporting functionality as well as the experience design issues related to museum visits through user modeling in combination with an audio augmented reality and tangible user interface system. This paper details our deployment and evaluation of ec(h)o – an augmented audio reality system for museums. We explore the possibility of supporting a context-aware adaptive system by linking environment, interaction object and users at an abstract semantic level instead of at the content level. From the user modeling perspective ec(h)o is a knowledge based recommender system. In this paper we present our findings from user testing and how our approach works well with an audio and tangible user interface within a ubiquitous computing system. We conclude by showing where further research is needed

Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead

Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user (e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed

Interactive Audio Content: An Approach to Audio Content for a Dynamic Museum Experience through Augmented Audio Reality and Adaptive Information Retrieval

ec(h)o is an “audio augmented reality interface” utilizing spatialized soundscapes and a semantic web approach to information. The paper discusses our approach to conceptualizing museum content and its creation as audio objects in order to satisfy the requirements of the ec(h)o system. This includes, the conceptualizing of information relevant to an existing exhibition design (an exhibition from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa). We will discuss the process of acquiring, designing and developing information relevant to the exhibition and its mapping to the requirements of adaptive information retrieval and the interaction model. The development of the audio objects is based on an audio display model that addresses issues of psychoacoustics, composition and cognition. The paper will outline the challenges and identify the limitations of our approach

Rules and ontologies in support of real-time ubiquitous application

The focus of this paper is the practical evaluation of the challenges and capabilities of combination of ontologies and rules in the context of realtime ubiquitous application. The ec(h)o project designed a platform to create a museum experience that consists of a physical installation and an interactive virtual layer of three-dimensional soundscapes that are physically mapped to the museum displays. The retrieval mechanism is built on the user model and conceptual descriptions of sound objects and museum artifacts. The rule-based user model was specifically designed to work in environments where the rich semantic descriptions are available. The retrieval criteria are represented as inference rules that combine knowledge from psychoacoustics and cognitive domains with compositional aspects of interaction. Evaluation results both from the laboratory and museum deployment testing are presented together with the end user usability evaluations.We also summarize our findings in the lessons learned that provide a transferable generic knowledge for similar type of applications. The ec(h)o proved that ontologies and rules provide an excellent platform for building a highly-responsive context-aware interactive application

Toward a model of computational attention based on expressive behavior: applications to cultural heritage scenarios

Our project goals consisted in the development of attention-based analysis of human expressive behavior and the implementation of real-time algorithm in EyesWeb XMI in order to improve naturalness of human-computer interaction and context-based monitoring of human behavior. To this aim, perceptual-model that mimic human attentional processes was developed for expressivity analysis and modeled by entropy. Museum scenarios were selected as an ecological test-bed to elaborate three experiments that focus on visitor profiling and visitors flow regulation

Situating approaches to museum guides for families and groups

In this paper, we analyze the current state of museum guide technologies and applications in order to develop an analytical foundation for our future research in an adaptive museum guide for families. We have focused our analysis on three critical areas of interest in considering group and social interaction in museums: tangibility, the role of tangible user interfaces; interaction, visit types and visit flows; adaptivity, user modeling approaches