User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

From Personalization to Adaptivity: Creating Immersive Visits through Interactive Digital Storytelling at the Acropolis Museum

Storytelling has recently become a popular way to guide museum visitors, replacing traditional exhibit-centric descriptions by story-centric cohesive narrations with references to the exhibits and multimedia content. This work presents the fundamental elements of the CHESS project approach, the goal of which is to provide adaptive, personalized, interactive storytelling for museum visits. We shortly present the CHESS project and its background, we detail the proposed storytelling and user models, we describe the provided functionality and we outline the main tools and mechanisms employed. Finally, we present the preliminary results of a recent evaluation study that are informing several directions for future work

A Pedagogy for Original Synners

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedThis essay begins by speculating about the learning environment of the class of 2020. It takes place entirely in a virtual world, populated by simulated avatars, managed through the pedagogy of gaming. Based on this projected version of a future-now-in-formation, the authors consider the implications of the current paradigm shift that is happening at the edges of institutions of higher education. From the development of programs in multimedia literacy to the focus on the creation of hybrid learning spaces (that combine the use of virtual worlds, social networking applications, and classroom activities), the scene of learning as well as the subjects of education are changing. The figure of the Original Synner is a projection of the student-of-the-future whose foundational literacy is grounded in their ability to synthesize information from multiple information streams

"You Tube and I Find" - personalizing multimedia content access

Recent growth in broadband access and proliferation of small personal devices that capture images and videos has led to explosive growth of multimedia content available everywhereVfrom personal disks to the Web. While digital media capture and upload has become nearly universal with newer device technology, there is still a need for better tools and technologies to search large collections of multimedia data and to find and deliver the right content to a user according to her current needs and preferences. A renewed focus on the subjective dimension in the multimedia lifecycle, fromcreation, distribution, to delivery and consumption, is required to address this need beyond what is feasible today. Integration of the subjective aspects of the media itselfVits affective, perceptual, and physiological potential (both intended and achieved), together with those of the users themselves will allow for personalizing the content access, beyond today’s facility. This integration, transforming the traditional multimedia information retrieval (MIR) indexes to more effectively answer specific user needs, will allow a richer degree of personalization predicated on user intention and mode of interaction, relationship to the producer, content of the media, and their history and lifestyle. In this paper, we identify the challenges in achieving this integration, current approaches to interpreting content creation processes, to user modelling and profiling, and to personalized content selection, and we detail future directions. The structure of the paper is as follows: In Section I, we introduce the problem and present some definitions. In Section II, we present a review of the aspects of personalized content and current approaches for the same. Section III discusses the problem of obtaining metadata that is required for personalized media creation and present eMediate as a case study of an integrated media capture environment. Section IV presents the MAGIC system as a case study of capturing effective descriptive data and putting users first in distributed learning delivery. The aspects of modelling the user are presented as a case study in using user’s personality as a way to personalize summaries in Section V. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper with a discussion on the emerging challenges and the open problems

Immersive Authoring of 360 Degree Interactive Applications

Although there are proposals in the literature for authoring mulsemedia (mul tiple se nsorial media) applications with 2D content, there are no suitable solutions when it comes to 360° content. Moreover, little consensus on 360° mulsemedia authoring methodology exists. Aiming at filling this gap, we propose the concept of immersive authoring of 360° multisensory applications. Our proposal comprises an immersive 360° authoring environment to bring the author closer to the final user presentation environment. We implemented our proposal in AMUSEVR, a virtual-reality (VR) environment for authoring 360° mulsemedia applications. We see it as an alternative or a possible complement to available 2D mulsemedia authoring tools. AMUSEVR provides creation and editing of interactive multiple sensorial media scenes by directly arranging objects in a 3D space using VR technology. Also, the tool allows users to run their applications through AMUSEVR viewer mode. We used the Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach to plan our tests and a group of users evaluated the tool with the SUS and UEQ questionnaires, obtaining a SUS score of 82.25 and an excellent UEQ benchmark, which are very promising results.10.13039/501100002322-Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), and Program for Institutional Internationalization (CAPES PrInt

A Simulation-Based Approach to Training Operational Cultural Competence

Cultural knowledge and skills are critically important for military operations, emergency response, or any job that involves interaction with a culturally diverse population. However, it is not obvious what cultural knowledge and skills need to be trained, and how to integrate that training with the other training that trainees must undergo. Cultural training needs to be broad enough to encompass both regional (culture-specific) and cross-cultural (culture-general) competencies, yet be focused enough to result in targeted improvements in on-the-job performance. This paper describes a comprehensive instructional development methodology and training technology framework that focuses cultural training on operational needs. It supports knowledge acquisition, skill acquisition, and skill transfer. It supports both training and assessment, and integrates with other aspects of operational skills training. Two training systems will be used to illustrate this approach: the Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainer (VCAT) and the Tactical Dari language and culture training system. The paper also discusses new and emerging capabilities that are integrating cultural competence training more strongly with other aspects of training and mission rehearsal

Model-Driven Development of Interactive Multimedia Applications

The development of highly interactive multimedia applications is still a challenging and complex task. In addition to the application logic, multimedia applications typically provide a sophisticated user interface with integrated media objects. As a consequence, the development process involves different experts for software design, user interface design, and media design. There is still a lack of concepts for a systematic development which integrates these aspects. This thesis provides a model-driven development approach addressing this problem. Therefore it introduces the Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), a visual modeling language supporting a design phase in multimedia application development. The language is oriented on well-established software engineering concepts, like UML 2, and integrates concepts from the areas of multimedia development and model-based user interface development. MML allows the generation of code skeletons from the models. Thereby, the core idea is to generate code skeletons which can be directly processed in multimedia authoring tools. In this way, the strengths of both are combined: Authoring tools are used to perform the creative development tasks while models are used to design the overall application structure and to enable a well-coordinated development process. This is demonstrated using the professional authoring tool Adobe Flash. MML is supported by modeling and code generation tools which have been used to validate the approach over several years in various student projects and teaching courses. Additional prototypes have been developed to demonstrate, e.g., the ability to generate code for different target platforms. Finally, it is discussed how models can contribute in general to a better integration of well-structured software development and creative visual design

Proceedings of the 1993 Conference on Intelligent Computer-Aided Training and Virtual Environment Technology, Volume 1

These proceedings are organized in the same manner as the conference's contributed sessions, with the papers grouped by topic area. These areas are as follows: VE (virtual environment) training for Space Flight, Virtual Environment Hardware, Knowledge Aquisition for ICAT (Intelligent Computer-Aided Training) & VE, Multimedia in ICAT Systems, VE in Training & Education (1 & 2), Virtual Environment Software (1 & 2), Models in ICAT systems, ICAT Commercial Applications, ICAT Architectures & Authoring Systems, ICAT Education & Medical Applications, Assessing VE for Training, VE & Human Systems (1 & 2), ICAT Theory & Natural Language, ICAT Applications in the Military, VE Applications in Engineering, Knowledge Acquisition for ICAT, and ICAT Applications in Aerospace