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

User modeling in adaptive audio-augmented Museum Environments

The paper illustrates approaches for making audio-augmented museum environments adaptive. Based on well-known user modeling techniques we present a combination of suitable components that adapt audio information to the interests, preferences and motion of a museum's visitor. The underlying environment, i.e. the carrier and transmitter of information, is provided by the LISTEN system, which enables the augmentation of everyday environments with audio information

Museum, memories and digital stories : A liminal space for human computer interaction.

Objects, material or digital, mediate memories: they act as anchors in between temporal notions and relations of past and present. Through those objects of memory, the act of remembering occurs neither completely relived in the mind, nor fully captured in the medium. Essential to personal memories, objects represent also our collective memory and capture our social history.The papers submitted for this PhD by selected publications look at the design of innovative technology that can make remembering more evocative and affective. They look at both museums, where digital and material are combined in an augmented reality, and personal/family contexts, where the home and mundane objects can be technologically enhanced to encapsulate digital memories.The museum was ideal to experiment with hybrid settings that combine material (the collection and the architectural space) and digital (the information) (papers 1 to 3). Personalization of information was used to augment the reality of rooms and exhibits: whole body interaction (i.e. physical movements in the space) was used to select and personalize the content and engage visitors with both material (the object) and digital (the information). Although the mobile technology is dated, these papers show the value of combining digital and physical to provide a holistic experience that made visitors wonder. Where the fusion occurs, however, is in the digital technology. To balance this perspective, paper 4 looks at the effect of taking the digital content out into the exhibition space. My recent research (papers 5-9) looks at objects of memory in the personal realm, in particular in the family home. Starting from observing the role and function of mementos, I conclude that a more holistic and organic approach has to be taken to make personal digital objects of memory more present in people's life. Materialization can be achieved with digital devices designed for individual and family use, so that the product fits with the mundane aspects of life, is immediate, and stimulates affect, not efficiency.Finally papers 10 and 11 provide evidence of the innovative methodologies I have developed and successfully used in iterative user studies and evaluations across different research projects and many years of research. As a whole this submission shows that there is a huge design space to explore in looking at how technology could be used in public or private spaces to bring together the two aspects of memory: remembering in the mind and capturing through objects, in order to preserve our digital life as tangible interactive objects