I took out my classmates to Bunratty yesterday (It didn't rain once out there!). Before going there, I came up with questions for the visit relating to the information they received, the use of their mobile phone, and what they hoped to achieve on their visit. I asked them questions in the Folkpark and after. I recorded these, and plan to transcribe this over the weekend.
With this information, and information from another trip out to the Folkpark I will start working on scenarios of some visitors. I will also be designing a paper prototype soon.
I'm having problems with the ARToolkit. I updated to Snow Leopard and now the toolkit won't run on my laptop. I haven't found any solutions online yet. Marc recommended that I look at other Augmented Reality development tools. I'm investigating the Layar API, Wikitude and looking up other options. So far, I've found FLARToolkit. I haven't started working with any of these yet. I have to learn how to user Terminal properly, as well as the different development methods with the API's. This will take some time.
Right now, I am working on my Interim Report. The deadline is 21st December, but I hope to have it done by the end of this week so I can focus on studying for exams which start on the 14th December.
Goals of Your Visit
Understanding the Visitor
Well, it's been a few weeks since my last post! I've been working on a lot of projects and college work, and trying to get my head around the ARToolkit.
I went out to Bunratty last week giving interviews, and got a good idea on technology uses in the park and if people were happy with the amount of information they were being given.
I am planning on heading out to the Folkpark again twice this week. Tomorrow afternoon I will head out and try to get an idea of what to focus my design on. I will be taking a look at the buildings and trying to find a theme for my project, like buildings with a link or another theme to work on. I'll have an interview with people there and see how they interact with the theme that I choose, if I choose a set of buildings I'll ask them if there's enough information on items inside a building or if there know what an object is inside the building etc.
On Wednesday, I hope to bring out some of my classmates (if they'll withstand the rain for me) and give them pre and post-tour interview, and give them the same interview that I plan on giving the visitors tomorrow about the information within the Folkpark. I plan on asking them to think aloud as we wander through the buildings, I will take record what they say, hopefully this will give me some good information on their goals for the visit, and how they achieve these goals.
During the next two days that I am visiting the Folkpark, I hope to find out how skilled the visitors are at using mobile phones, as the usage if my design will be on a mobile phone. I hope to find out the goals of the visitors and what they do in the Folkpark. Once I get this information I will be forming scenarios of several visitors and what they might interact with within my 'theme'.
Context Aware Tour Guides
I'm finally getting around to posting up about three papers I have read on context awareness in tourism guides. These guides are typically aware of their location and give a the user a tour, such as an audio tour, in this way it is in the same category as AR tours.
'Context-awareness in Mobile Tourist Information Systems: Challenges for User interaction' by Hinze and Buchanan discusses the challenges in context handling in mobile tourist information systems, and how to model, observe, evaluate and exploit this application area.
Development of a personal profile which knows travel history, means of travel, interests, location and current time. Information based on these contexts in the personal profile should be delivered to the user. Recommendations could be given based on the profile and user feedback.
Navigation should be supported on maps and location should be indicated on maps.
Tourism Context Challenges:
1. Concepts of Context
Characteristics of mobile device - storage and screen size
Network - bandwidth and peers
Application - requirements in storage, download capabilities and display capabilities
User - time, location, interests
Information Objects - location
The designers believe that the concept of context should be open and extensible to address different platforms and environments.
2. Context Management
The context should be considered through 4 tasks.
Model: Information should be available on objects that are of interest to the user based on their personal background, while keeping in mind time, location and direction which is continuously changing.
Observer: The context data of the user can be stored for future use.
Store: Data can be stored on the device as well as the server. Security issues will have to be addressed regarding personal information.
Access: Information has to be kept private, and the system has to be efficient.
3. Context Usage
The information should be presented in an effective way, with a good design of the interface. The system should be satisfactory to use, and the user should not be weakened by the transfer of data between the data and server.
'Context Awareness in Mobile Tourism Guides' by Schwinger et al. evaluates several context based tour devices and discusses the possibilities for ubiquitous computing (time and location awareness with possibility for personalised services), in the tourist industry this could be used for the personalised tourism information on points of interest.
Interesting Points
They found that most devices had poor CPU power was a limitation, and that memory in some devices could be reserved by having push based access. They found that social factors are important in tourism, especially with groups. Functionality should be high and text messaging could be a good feature for the devices.
'Cyberguide: A Mobile Context Aware Tour Guide' by Abowd et al. discusses Cyberguide, a project where they built a series of prototypes of a mobile context aware tour that knew the users current location and history of past locations. The long term goal of the project was to develop a device that would know where the tourist is, what he/she is looking at and predict and answer questions about the environment around them.
This paper is from 1997, the technology used is dated and many of the 'possible future' prospects have been developed since. The paper has many relevant points to Augmented Reality tour systems.
Device
A handheld device is seen as acceptable in this paper as a most tourists are happy to carry around a book for information. The ideal handheld device for the developers in this paper has:
- Screen and pen/finger interface
- Storage resources
- Access to input/output interface
- Video input/output
Design Process
The designers also used an iterative design process when developing the prototypes for this system, and got feedback through formal questionnaires, informal surveys, and informal user comments.
Interesting Points
The ideal personal guide would allow the tourist to see any exhibit in any order. The guide would locate the tourist through a navigation system (indoor beacons, GPS etc.) and objects marked with visual markers.
Real time communication could act as an agent, giving people the ability to book or make reservations from the device.
Enhance reality - give X-Ray vision (This could be in line with an Augmented Reality system)
The designers hoped to increase communication, improve the context awareness and have a modifiable information base.
