Helen MacLean Odense University helen@mip.ou.dk

Patrizia Marti Univerisy if Siena marti@media.unisi.it

The workshop held at the Università degli Studi di Siena on 20 February 1998 brought together a total of 74 academic and industrial specialists working in intelligent information interfaces and related technology. Three i3 projects - HIPS, Campiello and Magic Lounge - conducted a full-day workshop with representatives from industry. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the most appropriate technological solutions to the requirements emerging from novel human-centred systems and interfaces. Marialina Marcucci, Vice-Presidente della Regione Toscana, sensed the importance of this aim in her letter of welcome sent to the workshop, saying that "applications of new technologies represent exceptional opportunities not only for economic and social development but also for cultural and democratic growth."

The workshop was opened with a welcoming address by the Mayor of Siena, Pierluigi Piccini. He too stressed the importance of technological development which favours cultural growth and the improvement of the quality of life of citizens. He said that Siena, whose history and traditions allow the combination of a unique artistic heritage with information technologies, wished to play a major role in testing technologies for improving services in the city.

Giuliano Benelli introduced the workshop and Niels Ole Bernsen gave an overview of the i3 programme. Then Carlo Avetta, an officer of DG10 and a native of Siena, addressed the audience. Continuing the theme of culture linked to technology, he said that in the Fifth Framework 1998-2002 for the first time there were cultural heritage programmes. The call for proposals by 15 March 1998 for community software for cultural development and artistic and cultural projects would be of interest to all present at this workshop.

The morning was given over to presentations from the i3 projects, while nine industrial representatives gave theirs in two Forum sessions in the afternoon.

The project presentations

1) HIPS (Hyper Interaction within Phyical Space): Patrizia Marti explained the cultural implications of the intelligent appliance for tourists, and Alberto Bianchi the technology behind it. The many questions reflected strong audience interest in the technology; in how the information might be conveyed flexibly and most meaningfully, and in the text-to-speech and concept-to-speech problems.

2) CAMPIELLO: Marco Susani and Giorgio De Michelis then presented the Campiello project which seeks to use technology to overcome barriers and improve relations between the local community and visitors in Venice. Nektarios Moumoutzis explained the situation in Chania.

3) MAGIC LOUNGE: Thomas Rist then presented the challenges facing the Magic Lounge project, which is working on enabling people to team up in cyberspace, communicate together, and jointly explore the Web. Afterwards, Oliviero Stock (IRST) said he found this project fascinating, and asked what happens if people want to interact with each other? Panu Korhonen (NOKIA), while appreciating the research description, wished for more information about users – do they want it? How could solutions be validated – are they acceptable to the user community? Niels Ole Bernsen replied with some examples of user studies done at the Maersk Institute, which had shown that users do want the system, and think it useful.

Industrial forum I

Renato Agati (OSLY), Iain Burton (ARS ANTENNA), Ralf Hinz (Daimler-Benz AG), Panu Korhonen (NOKIA Research Center), and Claudio Fossati (ALCATEL, ITALIA) presented their products and their development plans. Renato Agati talked about active badges and their system architecture. Iain Burton presented The Gallery Guide, a portable audio CD-Rom machine - with language-select buttons and many other built-in choices such as a scrolling screen for the deaf - which can store 60-70 hours of high-quality sound. Launched two years ago, it is now used as the standard platorm in the Getty Museum, New York. Here was obviously something of great interest to HIPS. And indeed Iain said that HIPS was of great interest to ARS ANTENNA, when looking at the next generation of these appliances. Ralf Hinz discussed devices in cars, stressing that these need to be intelligent so that they are flexible and receptive. Panu Korhonen in his talk on Nokia Wireless data products said that they had 36,000 employees, of which 98% were engineers, indicating a focus on technology rather than user research. What are the real user needs? Maybe we should also find what users like to do, not just concentrate on solving user problems. Finally, Claudio Fossati spoke on the evolution towards wireless data services.

The subsequent discussion reflected again a real interest in practical questions - how the systems performed in real life. Iain gave some examples of feedback from users of his Gallery Guide. In response to a question about advertising, he said he saw sponsorship as a funding solution – Vodaphone pays for everything – as museums only have resources to look after the fabric of buildings and their contents but not for education.

Industrial forum II

Marco Carando (PSION ITALIA - VIDEO COMPUTER), Riccardo Antonini (SKYDATA), Andrea Crivellaro (Enterprise CE), Maria Antonietta Grasso (Xerox Research Centre Europe) took part in this forum. After Marco Carando had presented PSION products, Riccardo Antonini from SKYDATA, part of the Amusement consortium, talked about virtual representations of different kinds of people - and the translation not only of language but also the customs of people, such as hand gestures. Then Andrea Crivellaro from Enterprise CE described their products. Maria Antonietta Grasso ended on a different note with a talk on "Paper: the Cheapest portable Device" with reference to the Campiello project..

Thomas Rist of Magic Lounge said afterwards: "The most important message I learned from the Siena workshop was the following: The interest of industries in i3 projects is not so much the development of the technology itself. Rather, they are more interested in learning about the future needs of the broad public. Therefore, projects should not spend too many resources on solving technical problems. For example, if we do PDA programming, or struggle with networking issues and the like, we may make some mariginal technical contributions which are of minor interest to industries. This is especially true with regard to our limited project resources. Rather, more emphasis should be given to the identification of real and especially new user needs."

Giorgio De Michelis declared: " The workshop was a success. We can say that these types of meetings between i3 and industry are interesting and promising. We should create a mailing list of interested companies with which to continue the interaction in order to move, if and when possible, from simple conversation to collaboration."

Patrizia Marti concluded: "The workshop was a step forward in the attempt to provide industries with the right combination of new ideas about "human activities" to support with technology and the technological requirements needed to support such activities. All this in a temporal and technological horizon which represents a realistic challenge for industries. The workshop also highlighted the mission of these i3 projects: the study of new ideas for next generation systems able to support human activities in everyday life and the orientation of the industrial development towards human needs."

What did we learn?

The Siena workshop was sponsored by i3net.

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