This research addresses the problem of creating interactive experiences to encourage
people to explore spaces. Besides the obvious spaces to visit, such as museums or art
galleries, spaces that people visit can be, for example, a supermarket or a restaurant.
As technology evolves, people become more demanding in the way they use it and
expect better forms of interaction with the space that surrounds them. Interaction with
the space allows information to be transmitted to the visitors in a friendly way, leading
visitors to explore it and gain knowledge.
Systems to provide better experiences while exploring spaces demand hardware
and software that is not in the reach of every space owner either because of the cost or
inconvenience of the installation, that can damage artefacts or the space environment.
We propose a system adaptable to the spaces, that uses a video camera network and a wi-fi network present at the space (or that can be installed) to provide means to support interactive experiences using the visitor’s mobile device.
The system is composed of an infrastructure (called vuSpot), a language grammar
used to describe interactions at a space (called XploreDescription), a visual tool used to design interactive experiences (called XploreBuilder) and a tool used to create interactive experiences (called urSpace).
By using XploreBuilder, a tool built of top of vuSpot, a user with little or no experience
in programming can define a space and design interactive experiences. This tool generates a description of the space and of the interactions at that space (that complies with the XploreDescription grammar). These descriptions can be given to urSpace, another tool built of top of vuSpot, that creates the interactive experience application.
With this system we explore new forms of interaction and use mobile devices and
pico projectors to deliver additional information to the users leading to the creation of
interactive experiences. The several components are presented as well as the results of the respective user tests, which were positive.
The design and implementation becomes cheaper, faster, more flexible and, since it
does not depend on the knowledge of a programming language, accessible for the general public.NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics (NOVA LINCS), Multimodal Systems, Departamento de Informática (DI), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL) and Escola Superior de Tecnologia de Setúbal (EST Setúbal), Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (IPS)
