Choonsung Shin

Enhancing and evaluating users' social experience with a mobile phone guide applied to cultural heritage

We designed and built a mobile phone-based guidance system to support shared group experiences by suggesting the use of an eavesdropping metaphor inspired by Sotto Voce that allows visitors to eavesdrop on each other’s audio. Going beyond Sotto Voce, we create a shared experience by synchronizing the audio controls of all people who are eavesdropping on each other. Our contribution is the design of a mobile phone guide for cultural tours that combines a linear tour with in-depth information exploration, GPS-based maps offering group awareness, simple content customization and suggestions, and fluid movement between individual and ad-hoc group touring. The most important contribution is the design of a simple sharing scheme that gives all users in an ad hoc group implicit control over the audio content of everyone currently linked together. We evaluated our approach using data collected from participants, and our results validated the effectiveness and usefulness of our sharing scheme and interface for group experiences. In addition, we gained an understanding of how sharing information during visits to cultural heritage sites by socially related people influences the visiting experience; differing mutual eavesdropping and content control behaviors emerged according to group types (family vs. friends). By enabling groups to share their experience on-site, our system should increase the appeal of mobile phones as electronic tour guides, providing adequate support for shared group experiences.

Recent Trends in Ubiquitous Virtual Reality

Computing technology is radically changing the manner in which we work and communicate with computers. ubiquitous virtual reality (U-VR) has been researched in order to apply the concept of virtual reality and its technology into ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we analyze past research on ubiquitous virtual reality and find future research direction.

A mobile phone guide: spatial, personal, and social experience for cultural heritage

We have built a mobile phone-based guide system to strengthen the user experience in a cultural heritage site by supporting spatial awareness, personalization, and social connectedness. Our mobile phone guide implemented on a Java-enabled mobile phone provides both audio and visual content that is tailored by tracking user movement with GPS, collecting various user inputs and demographics, and allowing for socially acceptable eavesdropping via wireless networking. We applied our system to a cemetery site and present the results of a user study. We also conducted a performance evaluation to verify the effectiveness of both content filtering in personalization and content synchronization in social connectedness. Spatially, our results validated that our system provided a satisfying physical exploration of historic space. With respect to personalization, the content presented to visitors was well tailored to their real-time feedback over the course of their visit. Socially, the effectiveness of our sharing interface motivated visitors to frequently synchronize content among themselves. Our system will hopefully broaden the appeal of mobile phones as electronic tour guides providing adequate support for spatial awareness, personalization, and shared group experiences.

Unified Context-Aware Augmented Reality Application Framework for User-Driven Tour Guides

We propose a unified context-aware augmented reality application framework that supports intelligent guidance and enables users to participate in content generation in museum guidance. It helps a user find personal interesting artifacts in art galleries by exploiting context-based behavior generation. The framework also enables them to combine augmented contents with different information to change the shape of content according to their preferences. Furthermore, it allows the users to label real objects for attaching new contents over the objects. Through demonstration in an art gallery, we found that the resulting system effectively guided users to visit and enabled them to participate in tour guidance.

CAMAR 2.0: Future Direction of Context-Aware Mobile Augmented Reality

With the rapid spreading of ubiComp and mobile augmented reality, the interaction of mobile users in U-VR environments has been evolving. However, current interaction is limited in individuals’ experience with given contents and services. In this paper, we propose CAMAR 2.0 as a future direction of CAMAR aiming at improving perception and interaction of users in U-VR environments. We thus introduce three principles for future interaction and experience in U-VR environments. We also discuss technical challenges and promising scenarios for realizing the vision of CAMAR 2.0 in U-VR environments.

TOWARD COMBINING AUTOMATIC RESOLUTION WITH SOCIAL MEDIATION FOR RESOLVING MULTIUSER CONFLICTS

In spite of intensive effort to resolve conflicts between multiple users of context-aware applications in a smart space, there has been no practical solution for flexibly resolving them based on the situation of the users. In this paper, we propose a mixed resolution method to combine automatic resolution with social participation for resolving multiuser conflicts. For combining the two resolution approaches, various contexts such as preferences, priority, and types of applications are used to select an appropriate resolution method for the encountered conflict. Through an evaluation, we found that the performance of selection algorithms mainly depended on the number of users and the similarity between their preferences, and we derived an appropriate threshold for determining whether users were similar or not. With a user study of 3 applications in a smart-space test-bed, we observed that the combination of automatic resolution when preferences are similar and social mediation when preferences are different effectively resolved multiuser conflict even though social pressure played an important role, and the 3 different applications had different thresholds.

Context-Aware Cognitive Agent Architecture for Ambient User Interfaces

An ambient user interface is a set of hidden intelligent interfaces that recognize users presence and provides services to immediate needs. There are several research activities on user interfaces and interactions which combining VR/AR, ubiquitous computing/ambient interfaces, and artificial intelligence. However, real-time and intelligent responses of user interfaces are still challenging problems. In this paper, we introduce the design of Context-aware Cognitive Agent Architecture (CCAA) for real-time and intelligent responses of ambient user interfaces in ubiquitous virtual reality, and discuss possible scenarios for realizing ambient interfaces. CCAA applies a vertically layered two-pass agent architecture with three layers. The three layers are AR (augmented reality) layer, CA (context-aware) layer, and AI layer. The two passes interconnect the layers as an input or output. One of the passes of each layer is an input path from a lower layer or environmental sensors describing a situation. The other pass is an output path and deliveries a set of appropriated actions based on the understanding of the situation. This architecture enables users interact with ambient smart objects through an ambient user interface in various ways of intelligence by exploiting context and AI techniques. Based on the architecture, several possible scenarios about recognition problems and higher level intelligent services for ambient interaction are suggested.

A component for transmission of accelerometer signal over bluetooth for head motion analysis

In this paper, we present a component which is able to transmit the signal of accelerometer over Bluetooth to a smartphone for head motion analysis. The proposed component is composed of a Bluetooth module and an accelerometer. The component is connected to smart phone with Bluetooth connection. We analyzed vertical and horizontal motions for a headset based on the acceleration. We tried to find proper parameters of accelerometer for head motion analysis. We expect that this result will be helpful when we implement motion-based headset.