Creating stories for reflection from multimodal lifelog content: An initial investigation

Using lifelogging tools, digital artifacts can be collected continuously and passively throughout our day. These may include a stream of images recorded passively using tools such as the Microsoft SenseCam; documents, emails and webpages accessed; texts messages and mobile activity; and context sensing to uncover the current location and proximal individuals. The wealth of information such an archive contains on our personal life history provides us with the opportunity to review, reflect and reminisce upon our past experience. However, the complexity, volume and multimodal nature of such collections creates a barrier to such activities. We are currently exploring the potential of digital narratives formed from these collections as a means to overcome these challenges. By successfully reducing the content to that most appropriate to the story, and by then presenting it in a coherent and usable manner, we can hope to better enable reflection. The means by which content reduction and presentation should occur is investigated through card sorting activities and probe sessions which nine participants engaged in. The initial results are discussed, as well as the opportunity, as seen in these sessions, for lifelog-based stories to provide utility in personal reflection and reminiscence

DocuDrama

This paper presents an approach combining concepts of virtual storytelling with cooperative processes. We will describe why storytelling is relevant in cooperation support applications. We will outline how storytelling concepts provide a new quality for groupware applications. Different prototypes illustrate a combination of a groupware application with various storytelling components in a Theatre of Work

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

A visual exploration workflow as enabler for the exploitation of Linked Open Data

Abstract. Semantically annotating and interlinking Open Data results in Linked Open Data which concisely and unambiguously describes a knowledge domain. However, the uptake of the Linked Data depends on its usefulness to non-Semantic Web experts. Failing to support data consumers to understand the added-value of Linked Data and possible exploitation opportunities could inhibit its diffusion. In this paper, we propose an interactive visual workflow for discovering and ex-ploring Linked Open Data. We implemented the workflow considering academic library metadata and carried out a qualitative evaluation. We assessed the work-flow’s potential impact on data consumers which bridges the offer: published Linked Open Data; and the demand as requests for: (i) higher quality data; and (ii) more applications that re-use data. More than 70 % of the 34 test users agreed that the workflow fulfills its goal: it facilitates non-Semantic Web experts to un-derstand the potential of Linked Open Data.

Conversational Browsing

How can we better understand the mechanisms behind multi-turn information seeking dialogues? How can we use these insights to design a dialogue system that does not require explicit query formulation upfront as in question answering? To answer these questions, we collected observations of human participants performing a similar task to obtain inspiration for the system design. Then, we studied the structure of conversations that occurred in these settings and used the resulting insights to develop a grounded theory, design and evaluate a first system prototype. Evaluation results show that our approach is effective and can complement query-based information retrieval approaches. We contribute new insights about information-seeking behavior by analyzing and providing automated support for a type of information-seeking strategy that is effective when the clarity of the information need and familiarity with the collection content are low

Interactive Experience Design: Integrated and Tangible Storytelling with Maritime Museum Artefacts

Museums play the role of intermediary between cultural heritage and visitors, and are often described as places and environments for education and enjoyment. The European Union also encourages innovative uses of museums to support education through the cultural heritage resources. However, the importance of visitors’ active role in museums as places for education and entertainment, on the one hand, and the growing and indispensable presence of technology in the cultural heritage domain, on the other hand, provided the initial ideas to develop the research. This thesis, presents the study and design for an interactive storytelling installation for a maritime museum. The installation is designed to integrate different museum artefacts into the storytelling system to enrich the visitors experience through tangible storytelling. The project was conducted in collaboration with another PhD student, Luca Ciotoli. His contribution was mainly focused on the narrative and storytelling features of the research, while my contribution was focused on the interaction- and technology-related features, including the design and implementation of the prototype. The research is deployed using a four-phase iterative approach. The first phase of the research, Study, deals with literature review and different studies to identify the requirements. The second phase, Design, determines the broad outlines of the project i.e., an interactive storytelling installation. The design phase includes interaction and museum experience design. We investigated different design approaches, e.g., interaction and museum experience design, to develop a conceptual design. The third phase, prototype, allows us to determine how to fulfill the tasks and meet the requirements that are established for the research. Prototyping involves content creation, storyboarding, integrating augmented artefacts into the storytelling system. Th final phase, test, refers to the evaluations that are conducted during the aforementioned phases e.g., formative and the final usability testing with users. The outcome of the research confirms previous results in the literature about how digital narratives can be enriched with the tangible dimension, moreover it shows how this dimension can enable to communicate stories and knowledge of the past that are complex, such as the art of navigating in the past, by integrating tangible objects that play different roles in the storytelling process