Adrian G. Stoica

MuseumScrabble: Design of a Mobile Game for Children's Interaction with a Digitally Augmented Cultural Space

Mobile technology has created new possibilities for location-based playful learning experiences. This article describes the MuseumScrabble mobile game, aimed at children visiting a historical museum. The game requires that the players explore the museum and link abstract concepts with physical artefacts using a mobile device. The focus of this article is on the interaction design process and the subsequent observations made during field evaluation of the game. Design principles that guide the development of such a game are presented and concern playfulness, learning, social interaction, physical aspects of the game and flow between physical and digital space. This article explores how these design principles are reflected in the study and how problem-solving strategies and collaboration and competition patterns are developed by children in this multi-player educational game.

AN ARCHITECTURE TO SUPPORT PERSONALIZED INTERACTION ACROSS MULTIPLE DIGITALLY AUGMENTED SPACES

Any physical space can be augmented with digital information, associated to various locations or artefacts contained in it. In this paper, an abstract architecture is presented, supporting interaction with mobile context aware applications in public digitally augmented spaces. We focus on how this architecture supports personalization of interaction and adaptation. The main goal of the architecture is to allow users to benefit of a uniform and personalized experience across different contexts and spaces. Among the concerns are: to support high interoperability and flexibility and to address issues of privacy and user control. The framework has been tested in typical augmented spaces: a library and a museum. The paper concludes with a set of examples of use of the defined framework that cover typical situations for intra-space and across spaces usage.

Delivering multimedia content in enabled cultural spaces

In the context of a project involving development of an electronic guide and an educational application for a historical cultural museum, we defined an architecture that permits efficient and effective co-existence of objects in the physical space and digital multimedia content. Handheld devices were used for mediating the process. The prime consideration of the developed architecture was the optimal delivery of multimedia content, mainly in the form of audio but also video and text, to users of handheld devices, which raises an interesting number of issues both in terms of technology used and human-computer interaction.

Bridging the Gap between Physical and Abstract Worlds: Capturing Observed Phenomena in Abstract Models through MODELLINGSPACE

Observation and understanding of real world activities and phenomena is a basis of inquiry and reasoning and subsequently building of scientific knowledge. This involves moving from the perception of real world phenomena to constructing and exploring qualitative and quantitative relations that hold among the main elements. The transition between the two phases is not always smooth for the learners involved. In this paper, we present tools and activities that attempt to bridge the gap between the physical world experience and the abstract modeling and reasoning phase. Firstly, we discuss a modeling approach and the various representations involved. Then, we present the Video2Frames tool of ModellingSpace which is proposed to be used in order to create educational material by allowing the creation of abstract entities from video recordings of phenomena. Next an example of creation of educational material, using this approach is presented and discussed.

Edu-Smile: a context-aware service for synchronous support in Web-based educational systems

In this paper a context-aware service for synchronous support in Web-based educational systems is proposed. The main purpose of the service is to support Web-based learning scenarios by allowing synchronous communication and interaction among the tutors and the students, thus increasing the communication channels among them. Furthermore, the service provides a variety of tools that allows the tutors to provide real-time support to the students, discover usability and navigability problems and monitor their actions while they interact with the Web-based educational environment.

MobiAct: Supporting Personalized Interaction with Mobile Context-aware Applications

In this paper we present a conceptual framework for interaction with mobile context aware applications. The framework focuses especially on public and semi-public environments. Based on this framework a generic abstract architecture has been designed and several of its parts have been implemented. We discuss the implications and the support that this architecture provides for personalization of interaction. The architecture supports high interoperability and flexibility, with capability of tackling issues like privacy and degree of user control. The framework has been tested in typical spaces: a library and a museum. The paper concludes with a set of examples of use of the defined framework that cover typical situations for intra-space and across spaces usage.