Alia K. Amin

Semantic annotation and search of cultural-heritage collections: The MultimediaN E-Culture demonstrator

In this article we describe a Semantic Web application for semantic annotation and search in large virtual collections of cultural-heritage objects, indexed with multiple vocabularies. During the annotation phase we harvest, enrich and align collection metadata and vocabularies. The semantic-search facilities support keyword-based queries of the graph (currently 20M triples), resulting in semantically grouped result clusters, all representing potential semantic matches of the original query. We show two sample search scenarios. The annotation and search software is open source and is already being used by third parties. All software is based on established Web standards, in particular HTML/XML, CSS, RDF/OWL, SPARQL and JavaScript.

MultimediaN e-culture demonstrator

The main objective of the MultimediaN E-Culture project is to demonstrate how novel semantic-web and presentation technologies can be deployed to provide better indexing and search support within large virtual collections of cultural-heritage resources. The architecture is fully based on open web standards, in particular XML, SVG, RDF/OWL and SPARQL. One basic hypothesis underlying this work is that the use of explicit background knowledge in the form of ontologies/vocabularies/thesauri is in particular useful in information retrieval in knowledge-rich domains.

SenseMS: a user-centered approach to enrich the messaging experience for teens by non-verbal means

This paper reports the user study and design of a concept to improve mobile messaging for teens. A study of current mobile phone use by teens (16-18) showed that, while they prefer communicating by Short Message Service (SMS), they miss expressiveness in this application. An enhanced SMS application, SenseMS, is designed to support affective communication. An evaluation of a SenseMS prototype has shown that enhancing text messages with contextual information and human embodiment can result in a more pleasant experience for both the sender and receiver. Especially for negative emotions, contextual and emotional information are essential for interpreting the message. The study also showed different usage scenarios, in that SenseMS is preferred for emotion-rich messages, whereas SMS is more appropriate for fast and emotion-poor messages.

Organizing Suggestions in Autocompletion Interfaces

We describe two user studies that investigate organization strategies of autocompletion in a known-item search task: searching for terms taken from a thesaurus. In Study 1, we explored ways of grouping term suggestions from two different thesauri (TGN and WordNet) and found that different thesauri may require different organization strategies. Users found Group organization more appropriate for location names from TGN, while Alphabetical works better for object names from WordNet. In Study 2, we compared three different organization strategies (Alphabetical , Group and Composite ) for location name search tasks. The results indicate that for TGN autocompletion interfaces help improve the quality of keywords, Group and Composite organization help users search faster, and is perceived easier to understand and to use than Alphabetical .

The SenseMS: enriching the SMS experience for teens by non-verbal means

The paper presents a design exploration into emotional communication through mobile phones for teenagers. A participatory design approach was followed, that lead to the development of two potential enhancements to text messaging services that are feasible with today’s mobile phones. These enhancements refer to using MMS technology for: identifying callers through personalized avatars which are also coupled with context related information for the caller and using semi-automated text enhancements. Preliminary evaluation results are encouraging regarding the value of the emotional and contextual cues that can be conveyed in this way.