Jonathan Broadbent CB&J, France mailto:j.broadbent@cbj.fr

Patrizia Marti University of Siena marti@media.unisi.it

We are a consortium of eight European partners who will work together for three years to develop an intelligent appliance which will allow people to get information about an object, an artwork, a place while moving within the physical space. This appliance is called HIPS - Hyper Interaction within Physical Space.

On the 10th of October 1997 in Siena a group of people met together in the Museo Civico to take part in an interesting experimental workshop: the director of the Museo Civico, an expert of history of art, a foreign tourist, an Italian tourist, a museum custodian, the fine arts superintendent, the administrator of the bookstore (desk) at the museum entrance.

They were to be our informants in the first of a series of workshops we were organising in order to understand the problems people have when visiting a museum or a city, to assess the impact that our appliance could have on potential users, and to envision how it could be used to make a visit pleasant, interesting and informative. Our informants all had one thing in common - they are all potential users of HIPS at different levels.

How we did it. The workshop was organised in four phases: brainwriting, idea explanation, envisioning and clustering. After a brief presentation of HIPS and of the participants of the meeting, people were asked to answer simple questions in a given time slot. During the brainwriting phase, one facilitator asked the first question and people were requested to write on cards from one to three answers in form of keywords. The cards were attached on a blackboard. Afterwards, during the idea explanation phase, each participant explained his/her keyword encouraged by the facilitators to tell stories about personal experiences. Then, the cards were clustered by category of problems and needs in order to obtain a map of problem areas and to prioritise solutions. The clustering of user "desiderata" was completed by the envisioning of how HIPS should perform to be pleasant and useful.

During the workshop we asked two questions. The first was:

"According to your experience, which are the values and the deficiencies of the current information systems for visiting a museum or a city?"

Constraining the participants to answer on physically small cards ( and with big markers) led to clear and concise answers that broke the ice and allowed a frank discussion of the issues - and indeed the participants were very forthcoming in presenting the limitations of the current information systems! We grouped the results under two headings:

Delivery Systems

Labels (e.g. Captions under Paintings).

The one to one mapping of label to item is the simplest way to deliver information. As a "distributed" system, visitors reading them are spaced out. However, their placement and legibility can be problematic (many pictures on a wall or in a case, with frescos etc.). The information content is limited (too short and monolingual). Labels distract from the item itself.

Panels. Information panels in a room can deliver much more information than labels, however space constraints remain. Queues often form in front of them. Identifying specific items from a plan can be quite difficult.

Human Guides. The participants could only discuss guides in terms of good ones and bad ones, attributing all problems to the latter and all advantages to the former. A bad guide delivers information in a monotone, like a record. A good guide, in contrast, adapts his/her presentation to the group. The visit is by necessity in a group and thus cannot be tailored to the individual. Guided tours disturb other visitors.

Guide Books. Reading interferes with the visit. Often guides present a very limited view of the museum inducing visitors to search only for the items presented in the book. Good guide books tend to be too large and too heavy. Information can be difficult to find. Only one interpretation, path is offered.

Audio Guides. As a sequential system, one is forced to listen to "boring" bits to get to the desired information.

Signs. Signs in museums or around a city pertaining to tourism are dishomogeneous, symbols vary from context to context.

Content

Navigation. Visitors have a need for better navigational aids: to find specific items or places, to find where to go "next", to find services (toilets, bars etc.)

Up to date Info. There is a need for up to date information: all too often the information available to visitors is out of date.

Practical info. There is a great need for practical information that is seldom available to tourists: timetables, bus routes, pharmacies etc.

Links. Connections between items, even in different museums or cities ( to explain their context-see below) and references for further study were deemed hard to find.

Context. A lot of stress was put on the need to present items (works of art, buildings etc.) in their historical, social and economic context. This is an aspect that is often overlooked in present systems.

Children. Special attention must be given to presenting information to children in a fashion which is engaging and stimulating. Teachers lack in tools to assist them, the available systems being designed for adults.

Taking all these things into account, a worst possible (but unfortunately very realistic) scenario then for a tourist might be as follows:

"A tourist arrives in Siena. She is carrying with her a book guide of Siena. Wishing to find her way to the Museo Civico in Piazza del Campo, she consults the book but unfortunately the map of the city is fragmented in many small maps which are not detailed enough. After some attempts and with the help of people who kindly showed her the way, she reaches the Museo Civico. Once inside, she consults the book again. She would like to see the famous Guido Riccio's fresco but there are no maps inside. So she decides to follow one of the paths she has in front of her. After one hour, she has been in all the rooms of the museum but she still have the doubt: "Have I seen the Guido Riccio's fresco?" There are so many frescoes in the museum, and only few labels under them. At this point she decides to ask to the custodian where the Guido Riccio is... "It is just behind you, in the upper part of the wall ...".

In the second phase of the workshop we presented the HIPS system in very general terms, so as not to give the participants preconceived ideas.

We explained that we were developing an information appliance which would integrate the computational power of a computer with the technologies for wireless communication and localisation of the position . It would take the form of an electronic tour guide which would empower visitors to determine themselves the sequence of a tour, according to their own interests and preferences. And it would address many of the problems the informants had described above.

With this intelligent tool, one could envisage a very different scenario:

"A tourist arrives in Siena. She is carrying with her a small intelligent tool. It is like a small box, very light, and she can wear it as a necklace or bring in her hand. Wishing to find her way to the Museo Civico in Piazza del Campo, she consults the box which then displays for her a miniature map showing her exactly where she is now, and marking out the precise path to the Museo Civico. Following this path, she reaches the museum. Once inside, she consults the box again and again - to orientate herself in her surroundings, to ask for information on the exhibits, to find one of the nice bars in Piazza del Campo to have a relaxing cup of coffee, and to ask the way to the Museum of Santa Maria della Scala, the next place of cultural interest. From time to time she uses the box to record her own spoken comments, so building up her own personal travel guide to what she has experienced and enjoyed."

Then we asked our second question: "How would you like HIPS to be and how would you like HIPS to perform to make the visit to a museum or a city pleasant and interesting?" "It should help me to orientate myself inside the museum and outside" "I would like HIPS tell me anecdotes..." "If I'd be a teacher, I'd use HIPS to stimulate in my students the pleasure of the discovery, to find unusual links among paintings and sculptures..." "It could suggest me where to take rest if I'm doing a long tour" "Could I use it to know the timetable of the next buses to go to my hotel?"

We had anticipated much greater resistance to the project, especially from the "professionals". Instead, we received a very enthusiastic response from our informants. They were convinced that HIPS could address effectively many of the issues raised above. "Audio guides are often so boring...HIPS could offer a free exploration of the space" "Information in the context, information adapted to my personal attidudes and preferences...cool" "During the same tour, I could ask HIPS to guide me following a historical thread, or a political thread or an anecdotical one". "If HIPS can adapt its presentation, why don't give it to children..." "It can suggest to see other paintings of the painters I'm seeing and how to reach the place where they are hold..."

Many important points were raised, which we grouped as follows:

HIPS should Add not Replace

HIPS ought to be an extra tool and not a substitute for current tools. HIPS, in all cases, would not take the place of an existing system but be a complement to them.

A tool for exploration

The participants put a strong emphasis on HIPS as an exploratory tool, both of the physical environment and of the knowledge space it elicits.

An adaptive tool

HIPS should adapt its information presentation to its audience.

A Practical tool

The participants clearly indicated the need for practical, up to date information: phone numbers, opening times, timetables, hospitals etc. HIPS should contextualise this information - for example, it could give directions to the nearest open pharmacy.

Our informants saw HIPS as an opportunity to provide new services not currently available. A system with massive amounts of information available could allow links to be followed in great depth. Furthermore, the location awareness would give freedom to explore the environment at will. Different informants perceived different possibilities in HIPS. The professionals viewed HIPS as an opportunity to present different interpretations of artworks, and saw its educational potential. Our two tourists, however, saw an opportunity for anecdotal, more entertaining information.

This was the first of a series of workshops we are holding for users. To our next workshop we plan to invite tourist guides, teachers of primary and secondary school, and architects responsible for the museum layout. The data collected during these workshops will be integrated with the data coming from interviews, questionnaires and direct observation.

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