A mixed reality neighborhood tour: understanding visitor experience and perceptions

Museums are increasingly turning to technology to improve their offerings. This presents an opportunity to surrounding neighborhoods to take advantage of the museum in order to connect with visitors and offer them a glimpse into their community. The work presented in this article contributes to advancing the state of the art in designing Mixed Reality (MR) entertainment experiences by presenting and discussing Yasmine’s Adventures (YA), a mobile application aiming to extend the museum visitor’s experience into the surrounding neighborhood. YA demonstrates the potential of MR in engaging visitors to explore neglected urban areas. This is achieved by incorporating the opinions of community members, and other contextual information, into a fictional story telling journey, delivered through a MR entertainment experience distributed in real space. Consequently, users are provided with opportunity to connect with enriched portraits of these spaces. Results from a quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that participants’ perception of the neighborhood was positively affected by the experience, which fostered curiosity and willingness to explore the neighborhood both at the spatial and social levels. By taking the tour, participants increased their interest in interacting with locals and fostered greater knowledge of the area, which they were willing to share after experiencing it.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Aqua : Leveraging Citizen Science to Enhance Whale-Watching Activities and Promote Marine-Biodiversity Awareness

Life-supporting ecosystems are facing impending destruction. The human-computer interaction (HCI) community must rethink how to design technological interventions that reconcile concepts and theories for ecological computing. Proponents of sustainable HCI have pushed for tools and systems that aim to decenter the human in a shift toward post human design-a theoretical approach that challenges the assumption that only humans are stakeholders of technology as it increasingly shapes the future. Building on the iconic value of whales and the economic impact of whale watching as a form of ecotourism, we developed Aqua, a digital tool that leverages the potential of citizen science to engage tourists in marine-biodiversity awareness and conservation. This manuscript is advancing the field of sustainable HCI and tourism applications in two ways: first, we deliver an artefact contribution by designing and implementing a digital tool to enhance whale-watching activities. Second, we offer an empirical research contribution through observation and data gathering while comparing participants’ experiences of a whale-watching trip with and without the digital tool. Finally, preliminary insights are provided to inform the design of future digital tools aimed at promoting environmental conservation and citizen-science approaches among tourists. This work presents progression in understanding and informs the design of digital tools to engage tourists in novel and sustainable experiences.This work was supported by INTERTAGUA-MAC2/1.1a/385 and LARSyS-UIDB/50009/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

" In search of light": enhancing touristic recommender services with local weather data

Many destinations’ economies strongly rely on tourism. Therefore, it is crucial to meet tourists’ expectations, so they will return to the destination. The geographical formation of certain touristic islands often leads to local climates where it can be rainy and windy on one side of the island, whereas the other part is sunny. In this paper, we present a novel use for a network of sensors, LightBeam, a mobile location-based application aiming to improve the tourists’ experience. The application focuses on providing real-time guidance for tourists seeking sunlight to maximize their holiday experience by suggesting the closest points of interest (POIs) to the user with the “best sunlight”. To achieve this, we implemented and installed a network of geospatial sensors. The data from the sensor network is combined with the current location of the users to provide recommendations. We report on the initial design and prototype of LightBeam.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DreamScope Catcher: a Touch Sensitive Interface to Catch Dreams

Dream Scope is the interactive, stand alone, self contained portion of a bigger Art installation named Lucid Peninsula. The goal of the installation is to offer a way for people to experience the future through a physical interactive installation. To achieve this aim we designed and developed the interactive DreamScope device, while the Time’s Up collective designed and built the physical installation. On one side with the DreamViewer binoculars enable participants to see the Lucid Peninsula fictional world and absorb data relating to factors such as air quality, presence of plant and other life forms, etc. On the other side of the installation, the audience will be able to borrow mobile devices (DreamCatchers) and ‘catch’ the dreams of the inhabitants of the peninsula, which are mixed with memories of the world before it was transformed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of yasmine’s adventures: exploring the socio-cultural potential of location aware multimedia stories

This paper describes Yasmine’s Adventures, a location aware multi‐ media story designed as a location based service for a museum. Yasmine’s Adventures follows a young local girl (Yasmine) through a series of short animated adventures, tailored specifically to engage visitors in exploring the rela‐ tively neglected streets of the area in which the museum is situated. Yasmine’s perceptions of the landmarks, identified by community members themselves, reflect the real concerns of the community. Results from the evaluation of the user’s experience suggest location connection and perception changes when loca‐ tive media narratives include learning, understanding and discovery elements.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Characterization of Mullite Ceramic Membranes and their Application in the Removal Escherichia Coli

This paper aims the morphological and structural characterization of ceramic membranes of mullite and their application in the removal of Escherichia coli. A complex irregular structure presented by the pores of the membrane was verified by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The average pore size and distribution were determined by mercury intrusion porosimetry. The average pore size of the material presented was 0,39 μm. Microfiltration tests resulted in a protein retention of 46, 76 and 89% for trypsin (TR), egg albumin (EA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA), proving the efficiency of the membrane microfiltration tests for molecular weight of 69 kDa. The application of the membranes on the retention of gram-negative bacterium E. coli resulted in a 66% efficiency at a pressure of 200 kPa and a 98% efficiency when applied a pressure of 50 kPa. Therefore, the use of mullite membranes show limited efficiency towards bacteria retention. Nevertheless, they present fluxes similar to other materials proposed in the literature

Looking Forward, Looking Back: Interactive Digital Storytelling and Hybrid Art Approaches

This volume collects documentation of the 2017 International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling Art Exhibition and new scholarly texts from the artists involved. The work traces themes of Time & Tempo across Digital Poetics and Literature, Digital Heritage, and Urban Space and Politics

Lucid Peninsula

In this paper we present Lucid Peninsula, an interactive installation designed to immerse participants in a dreamlike, post-apocalyptic story world. The goal of the installation is to offer a way for people to experience the future through a physical interactive installation. To achieve this aim we designed and developed the interactive DreamScope device, while the Time’s Up collective designed and built the physical installation. On one side with the Dreamviewer binoculars users will be able to see the world outside and absorb data relating to factors such as air quality, presence of plant and other life forms, etc. On the other side of the installation, the audience will be able to borrow mobile devices (Dreamcatchers) and venture into the actual landscape of the city, in order to ‘catch’ the dreams of the inhabitants of the peninsula, which are mixed with memories of the world before it was transformed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Step by Step: Evaluating Navigation Styles in Mixed Reality Entertainment Experience

The availability of depth sensing technology in smartphones and tablets adds spatial awareness as an interaction modality to mobile entertainment experiences and showcases the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) for creating immersive and engaging experiences in real world contexts. However, the lack of design knowledge about interactions within MR represents a barrier to creating effective entertainment experiences. Faced with this challenge, we contribute a study of three navigation styles (NS) for MR experiences shown on a handheld device. The navigation styles range from fully virtual, through a mixed style that involves both on-screen and in-world activity, to fully real navigation. Our findings suggest that when designing an MR experience, the navigation style deployed should reflect the context, content and required interactions. For our MR experience, ???The Old Pharmacy???, with its specific content, context and required interactions, results show that navigation styles relying on in-world activity leads to higher levels of Presence, Immersion and Flow