Mara Dionisio

The iLand of Madeira location aware multimedia stories

This paper describes the initial stages for the iLand project, a Location Aware Multimedia Story project that captures and exposes the rich oral culture and traditions at the Island of Madeira, using the Madeira main city, Funchal, as a setting to bring a new level of engagement of the audience with the city and its traditional stories. We developed high quality content to be used in an already existing platform to deliver location aware stories. With the story experience carefully designed, an evaluation was carried out in order to expose the opportunities where such systems can be improved. Finally we discuss the results from the evaluation and explain how we will address them in the design of our new system.

IVRUX: A Tool for Analyzing Immersive Narratives in Virtual Reality

This paper describes IVRUX, a tool for the analysis of 360o Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) story-driven experiences. Traditional cinema offers an immersive experience through surround sound technology and high definition screens. However, in 360o IVR the audience is in the middle of the action, everything is happening around them. The immersiveness and freedom of choice brings new challenges into narrative creation, hence the need for a tool to help the process of evaluating user experience. Starting from “The Old Pharmacy”, a 360o Virtual Reality scene, we developed IVRUX, a tool that records users’ experience while visualizing the narrative. In this way, we are able to reconstruct the user’s experience and understand where their attention is focused. In this paper, we present results from a study done using 32 participants and, through analyzing the results, provide insights that help creators to understand how to enhance 360o Immersive Virtual Reality story driven experiences.

Placing Location-Based Narratives in Context Through a Narrator and Visual Markers

Location-based services, narratives and interactive experiences have a substantial tradition in human–computer interaction. Building on this background, we report the iterative design process, prototyping and evaluation of Seven Stories, a location-based narrative experience. The design includes two novel features that aim to link the user experience more closely to its physical context: visual markers scanning and a narrator. We have evaluated Seven Stories with two studies. Study 1, with 12 participants, was conducted using qualitative methods to assess the overall user experience. Study 2, with 21 participants, was conducted using quantitative methods, to evaluate the role of the markers and narrator as specific design features. Our contribution is to illustrate, through both qualitative and quantitative findings, how these two novel features influence the user experience, and what implications they have for design.

Evaluation of Yasmine’s Adventures: Exploring the Socio-Cultural Potential of Location Aware Multimedia Stories

This paper describes Yasmine’s Adventures, a location aware multimedia story designed as a location based service for a museum. Yasmine’s Adventures follows a young local girl (Yasmine) through a series of short animated adventures, tailored specifically to engage visitors in exploring the relatively neglected streets of the area in which the museum is situated. Yasmine’s perceptions of the landmarks, identified by community members themselves, reflect the real concerns of the community. Results from the evaluation of the user’s experience suggest location connection and perception changes when locative media narratives include learning, understanding and discovery elements.

Self-sustained n-Type Memory Transistor Devices Based on Natural Cellulose Paper Fibers

Abstract Reported herein is the architecture for a nonvolatile n‐type memory paper field‐effect transistor. The device was built via the hybrid integration of natural cellulose fibers (pine and eucalyptus fibers embedded in resin with ionic additives), which act simultaneously as substrate and gate dielectric, using passive and active semiconductors, respectively, as well as amorphous indium zinc and gallium indium zinc oxides for the gate electrode and channel layer, respectively. This was complemented by the use of continuous patterned metal layers as source/drain electrodes.

iLand: a tangible location aware narrative experience

iLand is a technology enhanced location aware narrative experience that captures and exposes the rich oral culture and traditions in the Island of Madeira for a wide variety of audience in particular foreigners and tourists. Using the Madeira main city, Funchal, as a setting to bring a new level of engagement of the audience with the old part of the city and its traditional stories. With this aim in mind we designed an immersive experience in the old part of the city were the local settings and its tangible details merge with the story world and events. As the experience unfolds the audience is taken deeper into the local traditions as well as into the old part of the city. In order to achieve this we designed and produced a series of short stories carefully distributed in the real space. The experience is mediated through the Placeware location aware mobile story platform [1] to functions as a tangible interface between the local stories and architectural setting and its audience.

Transmedia Storytelling for Exposing Natural Capital and Promoting Ecotourism

Humanity benefits from natural ecosystems in a multitude of ways; collectively, these are known as ecosystem services. Our project investigates how storytelling, coupled with mobile interactive technologies, can be used to design interventions that bring awareness and engage people in understanding the benefits of ecosystems and their underlying biodiversity. “Fragments of Laura” a technology mediated transmedia story, reveals to its audience (mostly tourists) information related to the local natural capital and ecosystem services of a UNESCO-protected forest, and embodies many aspects of its history, culture and ecotourism potential. In this paper, we present the overall interaction and story design, together with the results from the “Fragments of Laura” experience prototype. We conclude with a description of the future work and how the results from the experience prototype will affect the final working prototype.

Yasmine’s Adventures: An Interactive Urban Experience Exploring the Sociocultural Potential of Digital Entertainment

Urban computing systems impact quality of life in densely populated areas. With the widespread availability of wireless networks and portable devices, urban areas are fast becoming a hybrid of the physical environment and the digital datasphere. This paper describes Yasmine’s Adventures, a location aware storytelling platform that leverages on urban computing strategies to create an interactive walk through the Mehringplatz area, surrounding the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Yasmine’s Adventures (YA) is a mobile application that delivers a sequence of animations clips tailored specifically to the Mehringplatz neighbourhood. The story follows an adventurous local girl as she walks home alone, visiting local landmarks. Yasmine’s perceptions of the landmarks, identified by community members in an earlier workshop, reflect the real concerns of the community. This interactive experience was created to engage visitors of the Jewish Museum to explore the relatively neglected streets of the area in which the museum is situated.

Fall of Humans: Interactive Tabletop Games and Transmedia Storytelling

This paper illustrates how transmedia storytelling can help introduce players to interactive tabletop games. To do so, we developed Fall of Humans (FoH), an experience that takes place over two games: Meat factory, a physical card game where players compete to create different zombies; and Uprising, a interactive tabletop game where players can get to see the zombies they have created come to life.

A Mixed Reality neighborhood tour: Understanding visitor experience and perceptions

Abstract Museums are increasingly turning to technology to improve their offerings. This presents an opportunity to surrounding neighborhoods to take advantage of the museum in order to connect with visitors and offer them a glimpse into their community. The work presented in this article contributes to advancing the state of the art in designing Mixed Reality (MR) entertainment experiences by presenting and discussing Yasmine’s Adventures (YA), a mobile application aiming to extend the museum visitor’s experience into the surrounding neighborhood. YA demonstrates the potential of MR in engaging visitors to explore neglected urban areas. This is achieved by incorporating the opinions of community members, and other contextual information, into a fictional storytelling journey, delivered through a MR entertainment experience distributed in real space. Consequently, users are provided with opportunity to connect with enriched portraits of these spaces. Results from a quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that participants’ perception of the neighborhood was positively affected by the experience, which fostered curiosity and willingness to explore the neighborhood both at the spatial and social levels. By taking the tour, participants increased their interest in interacting with locals and fostered greater knowledge of the area, which they were willing to share after experiencing it.