Basic Layout and Next Step

From my initial sketching I came up with an simple layout of how this interface could work. These concepts are early in my process as of yet. My idea is that users will have access to Camera, Map and List view with very little effort involved. From my early research the categories of Houses/Places, Events and Food are most important when navigating through the Folk Park. Using the scenarios I have an understanding of how a visitor might use the application. Below are three layout concepts that I will be testing with users shortly.

Image 1 - Visualisation of Place Category with info on a house. All the places can be seen as dots in the cross at the top right.

Image 2 - Place Category with option to group places in to 'same era' or 'same area'. Blue marker indicates user. Any of the orange markers can be chosen forinformation/location.

Image 3 - Visualisation of Events category in List view. There is a reminder feature here, and the option to sort the events by time or locations. By pressing the blue arrow users will be taken to a separate page with more information, and they can place the event in their reminders.

Where to from here?

This is the basic layout of the interface. It does not include the features that I am going to add to truly enhance the visitors experience. I am developing ways to make this application unique to Bunratty Folk Park. I want to help visitors who go the Folk Park through maps and easy to use timetables but also give them an extra connection to the attraction that they can engage in.

Areas that I am developing are connecting with:

• children's game(s) in AR
• videos of characters from the era overlapping in the camera view
• geocache games

There are other aspects of the Folk Park I am also trying to develop for the features including the baking that occurs in some houses, the animals that live in the park and the objects within the houses and the tools outside. I am currently sketching up ideas for how these will look. I am also continuously investigating how an Open Air Museum might benefit from AR technology and I hope to develop it further within this application.

Time to Update!

I got my Interim Report finished well before exams. I did the annotated bibliography and moved on to what I have done so far in my FYP. This blog came in very handy for it! 

In it I discussed the methodology (empirical research and iterative design), and the overview of my completed work - benefits of mobile aids, the available platforms, designing for a mobile phone and my conclusions from my field work at Bunratty Folk Park. I discussed what I hoped to do in the future.

Then came exam time, and I focused on studying and getting on to Christmas holidays! Over the past few weeks I have been trying to get my head around setting up the Android Developer with Layar API and Wikitude API. The Android Developer's have a great community and tutorials. I would love to try and develop Layar or Wikitude for the iPhone, but Layar has recently been pulled from the App Store due to crashes. It is due to be re-released soon but I want to get in to developing as soon as possible. While the Wikitude iPhone community doesn't seem as strong as their Android community.

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.

Location Aware Mobile Interactive Guides: Usability Issues

I found this paper to be very useful in my background research. It discusses a handheld mobile guide, the design process and some important issues they came across when designing the guide.


'Location Aware Mobile Interactive Guides: Usability Issues' by Jonathan Broadbent and Patricia Marti
Overview
This paper deals with HIPS (Hyper Interaction within Physical Space) - a project funded by the European Commission, the aim of which is to develop a handheld electronic tour guide for cities/museums and the exploration of the physical environment. It hopes to support users in their everyday working/leisure activities 
Integration:

• Handheld Computing 
• Wireless Communications
• Positioning Technologies

System Guide - generate audio messages for finding items of interest and describing items with additional information, suggestions and alternate routes. Information will be generated based on maps, spatial direction. The system will integrate user requests, history of browsing and location.

The Design Process

When designing this system iteratively, the designers had four essential activities in mind to ensure understood and specified user needs:

• Context of use
• Effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction
• Prototypes
• Evaluation of prototypes 

User testing after installation of Museum of Santa Maria.
Tests: Time to complete a task, success rate, errors, satisfaction and fun
Collection of Data: Videotape; Questionnaire; Time and error measures
Diagnostic Evaluation: focus groups; heuristic evaluation; analytic evaluation; physical and cognitive operations and observational evaluation
Scenario Building: explore new forms of interaction; creation of real scenarios; share the experience; describe existing activities or envision new ones.
Scenarios were used for functional definitions, and to clarify thoughts on potential features.


Interesting Points

Location Aware mobile devices that permit the navigation of both a physical space and a related information space at the same time represents a new interaction paradigm.

It shows the important to decrease costs to produce for the mass market.

Robustness of device design depends on interactivity, the speed of response, how the information is to be presented, gradual degradation and effective feedback.

Design should be centred on user, instead of testing the validity of a data encryption algorithm. Human centred design ensures that the system is designed to suit their needs. The paper uses the iterative design process - Design, Test with Users, Redesign.

The designers hope to give a rich variety of options in an information space, rather than being bound to the physical constraints of the real world.

Information must be shown to the user in a way appropriate to the user and the context of use.
Testing of prototype must be done to eliminate sources of confusion and error and identify sources of enjoyment.

Networking aspect crucial. Contraints on storage (which may not apply to networked devices).
Centralising data will allow for greater simplification when downloading data. Updating can be done centrally in this way also.