Context Driven Information Systems for Museum Visitors Prof. Nigel Linge1, Prof. David Parsons1, Mr Duncan Bates1, Dr Robin Holgate2, Ms Pauline Webb2, Mr David Hay3 and Dr. David Ward4 CNTR, University of Salford1, Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester2, BT Group Archives3, SETPOINT4
Email:
[email protected] Abstract-The growth in wireless and mobile communications technologies is facilitating the development of a new range of location based information services. Such services offer many new opportunities for organisations such as museums who are constantly striving to improve their overall visitor experience. There is considerable interest in the use of location based services to track visitors as they move around a museum gallery such that information can be delivered that adds value to the exhibit on view. In addition exhibit information can be personalised to the visitor using aspects of their context that relate to their museum visit. In this paper we present an architecture for the development of a context driven information system that is to be deployed within a new “Manchester Communicates” gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. This paper also reviews previous research into context driven systems, carried out at the University of Salford, that formed the foundations of this new system.
I. INTRODUCTION The challenge for museums today is to ensure that they continue to engage and excite visitors who are increasingly exposed and immersed in digital media and computer technology. Consequently museums are constantly striving to improve the visitor experience and the use of mobile communications technologies within Museums such as that featured at the ‘Mobilising the Museum Experience Colloquium’ in April 2005. Indeed, the 2004 NESTA FUTURELAB SERIES, Report 9: Learning with Digital Technologies in Museums, Science Centres and Galleries stated that “museums, galleries and science centres are among the most enthusiastic providers of digital learning opportunities”. Equally, the 2004 NESTA FUTURELAB SERIES, Report 11: Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning concluded that “A blended approach to enabling learning with mobile technologies is necessary as successful and engaging activities draw on a number of different theories and practices.” Hence, for museums modern wireless based technology offers new ways of delivering information to visitors and enhancing their learning experience.
ISBN: 1-9025-6013-9 © 2006 PGNet
A small number of British museums, including Tate Modern, the Royal Institute and the Fitzwilliam Museum, in recent years have experimented with the use of mobile technology, including its location determining properties, to deliver context driven multimedia tours. After product trials in 2002 and 2003-04, which won the Interactive Entertainment Award for technical innovation from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Tate Modern has recently launched a full product. In this paper we introduce a new project that aims to raise the awareness of communications technologies within the general public and school children. This will be achieved through a project that includes the design and development of a wireless based information system for deployment within a new gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (MSIM). This new gallery celebrates the evolution of communications and its impact on society.
II. CONTEXT DRIVEN INFORMATION SYSTEMS With the significant growth in mobile communications, the ability to determine location is leading to the development of a new generation of multimedia location based services. Similarly, the trend towards ubiquitous and pervasive computing is increasing the importance and relevance of context in modern systems. However, as other authors have previously pointed out, context is more than just location [3]. To fully appreciate what constitutes context awareness and what context actually is, Dey [4] carried out a comprehensive review of the most prominent work that has previously attempted to define context and context awareness. These definitions are probably the most concise and well defined to date and are as follows:
Context:
‘Context is any information that can be used to characterise the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and the application themselves’.
Context aware: ‘A system is context aware if it uses context to provide relevant information and / or services to the user, where relevancy depends on the user’s task’. Dey and Abowd [5] also proposed a hierarchy of contextual types and outlined a method of categorising context aware applications. Identity, Location, Activity, and Time are considered as the four primary context types. These primary context types are then used to index and define secondary context types. For example: given a person’s current location, a secondary context type could be: where they have been or where they are going. This hierarchy obviously has applications to defining a class structure of context types that could be used in the development of context aware applications, or indeed an xml based mark-up language, as has recently been attempted [6]. This groundwork enabled us to undertake research into the development of context driven information systems. Originally this work centred on field engineers working with the utility industry [7] but then expanded to embrace the generic question of optimising information flow to users based upon their contextual situation and driven by a workflow process model [8]. We developed a generalised architecture for such a system and this is summarised in figure 1. This has at its core, a workflow process model which not only describes each stage of the tasks being undertaken but also contains links to distributed information sources and specifies where and when each piece of information is required [9].
Fig. 1. Generalised Model for Optimising Information Flow based upon User Context
1
www.connected-earth.com
Referring to our model, user context is defined to include a user profile, location & time information, the reason why the given task is being performed and specifically how that data is accessed. The inclusion of ‘how’ develops the work of Dey and Abowd and allows the system to not only react appropriately to the type of access device the user is using but also accounts for the current performance of the delivery network. So, the available delivery network might not always be able to deliver the required information in the highest quality. For this reason, data that is to be delivered is considered to be made up of a set of data choices that are attached to a workflow process model. These range from the most bandwidth hungry choice, such as a video file, to a simple text file. The set of data choices is considered to represent the same information content but expressed in different formats. With the addition of a controller object this conforms to the commonly accepted model-view-controller (MVC) pattern, an implementation of which could include a set of xml files and associated xsl files to provide the views. We modelled a number of workflow processes using UML which allowed us to examine the true relationship between activities or tasks, linked data sources, and flow based on transitions and decision points. A key finding was that as user expertise increases and basic tasks no longer need to be delivered, this very quickly results in the workflow models becoming too sparsely populated to retain any meaning or functionality. To smooth out these gaps in the workflow “story”, it was necessary to introduce additional ‘advanced’ tasks into the workflow models in order to compensate for this.
III. THE “MANCHESTER COMMUNICATES” GALLERY As the world’s first industrial city Manchester has been at the forefront of many innovations in communication. This embraces the early adoption of telegraphs and the telephone, the exploitation of print, especially newspapers, the expansion of radio and television and the invention of the modern programmable computer. By the late 20th century a post industrial Manchester was repositioning itself in a world where instant trans-global communications are taken for granted. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester is about to launch a new gallery entitled “Manchester Communicates” that is designed to tell this amazing story. It forms a key part of BT’s Connected Earth1 internet-based museum project – the first web based museum underpinned by a series of major physical collections distributed amongst a network of UK museums. The new gallery offers visitors a journey through four themed zones. Starting with an understanding of body language, speech and writing, the visitor progresses to look at technologies that enabled printing, photography and sound recording before considering the mass communications
potential of radio, telegraphy and television. The journey concludes with a vision of the future and a zone devoted to technology convergence and the post digital world.
IV. ENGAGING WITH COMMUNICATIONS The story of communications, how it functions, what its capabilities are and how it impacts on society is an important one and people young and old would benefit from an increased awareness of how some of the technology functions and, more importantly, what it can do for them. This is the aim of our latest project, “Engaging with Communications”, which is funded by the EPSRC under their Partnerships for Public Engagement programme. Working in partnership with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, SETPOINT and BT Connected Earth, our goal is to raise awareness of communications technologies across a broad range of age groups. This will be achieved through the provision of special events for Schools and Colleges, particularly supporting the key-stage 3 ICT curriculum, and the delivery of general interest lectures. Working in collaboration with the Museum of Science and Industry, we aim to bring a new and innovative experience to the “Manchester Communicates” Gallery. It is our intention to deploy a context driven information system based on wireless communications within the new Gallery. This is to enable us to create a new series of intelligent interactive location dependent educational experiences. Visitors will be provided with a handheld device, such as a Personal Data Assistant (PDA) that is able to connect to a hybrid network comprising wireless LAN and radio frequency (RF) technologies. The wireless LAN offers sufficient bandwidth to allow multimedia information to be delivered in real time to each PDA whilst the RF electronic tags placed at key locations and on selected exhibits around the Gallery allow visitor location to be determined as shown in figure 2.
Fig. 2. Manchester Communicates Gallery – Network Infrastructure
The ability to locate a visitor, but more importantly to track their movements through a gallery allows information to be delivered that is not only personalised to the user but also intelligently adapts to the route that the visitor has chosen to take. So, for example, going from exhibit A to exhibit C without seeing exhibit B will generate a different experience than if exhibit B had been visited. In addition, knowing that one PDA is being used by a teacher allows information to be sent that will assist that teacher in conducting their task. All of these are part of the overall context knowledge and form secondary context types of what, where and who. Known as “mi-Guide” this context driven information system will provide an enhanced visitor experience for the Museum allowing for additional content to be delivered using the full capabilities of multimedia. In addition it will provide an ideal vehicle through which to better engage with the visitors and to demonstrate the operation and function of communications systems. The mi-Guide system will form a valuable part of the museum gallery experience, a museum gallery devoted to informing people about the importance and relevance of communications technology and to telling its unique story. V. THE MI-GUIDE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The mi-Guide application will be delivered via handheld devices, such as PDAs, whereby additional information about the various exhibits is ‘pushed’ onto the devices as the user approaches the given exhibit. In order to achieve this, the PDAs require a means of detecting their proximity to the nearest exhibit. This is anticipated to be some form of tag which is detectable from the PDA. The PDA will either automatically poll for tags within a given radius at a regular time interval or the user will announce their presence at an exhibit by using the PDA to scan the appropriate tag. At this stage in our work the RF technology to be used will be either RFID, WiFi, BlueTooth or IrDA. The overview diagram in figure 3 shows a set of xml files working in conjunction with the back-end database, which in this particular case is shown as a MySQL database management system. The purpose of the xml files is to facilitate a more simplified description of the information related to each exhibit. The exhibits will have associated text together with any additional media files such as video & sound clips or additional images that the museum might want to display pertaining to the exhibit. This text must also be ‘marked up’ as text that is significant to certain general classifications of people (user type), e.g. adults & children, as well as more specific classifications such as teacher & pupil. In addition, the user’s progress through exhibits and any missed exhibits (user exhibit history) will be recorded as part of the system’s context knowledge base.
Fig. 3. The mi-Guide System Architecture
This requirement to mark up text as belonging to different groupings (user types) as well as the links to any associated media lends itself to defining the information at each exhibit in terms of xml. Xml is designed for this very purpose, i.e. to mark up data and allow it to be passed between applications in a platform and language neutral way. Moreover, there is a need to maintain the information at exhibits along with a variety of other information. A system administration function will be provided that is able to maintain the information in the xml files in a user-friendly fashion. This will also allow the information delivered about an exhibit to be structured for each given user type. The alternative approach of constructing information from relevant database tables could result in exhibit information where the joins between the constituent information can be seen, giving the impression of a story that is ‘clunky’ and doesn’t flow. This relates back to one of the key findings of our previous research, i.e. the requirement for additional advanced workflow tasks as user expertise increases. An additional advantage of xml files is that they can be associated with appropriate xsl stylesheets so that the xml data can be transformed into a given presentation, most likely html or jsp pages. This can be achieved by parsing the xml with an appropriate xml parser and converting the data in real time. These pages can then be delivered to the client browser on the PDA. To provide support for these ideas, xml documents are said to fall into two broad categories: data-centric and documentcentric. Data-centric documents are those where xml is used as a data transport, whereas document-centric documents are characterized by irregular structure and mixed content and their physical structure is important. Data-centric documents are usually designed for machine consumption whereas document-centric documents are usually designed for human consumption. It is the latter case that is applicable here where xml is used for its mark-up capabilities in a similar fashion to the way that html is used to mark up web pages [10]. It could also be argued that data-centric xml is best represented by a relational database management system
(RDBMS) with all the extra features that an RDBMS is normally capable of providing such as fast retrieval of data through SQL statements and/or stored procedures, transaction management, locking mechanisms etc. As usual these two worlds are coming closer together though through the advent of xml databases and conventional RDBMSs that can export their database schemas as xml schemas. So the plan here is to adopt a hybrid of a conventional RDBMS and a set of xml/media files. The back-end database is needed to store the data that will allow the administration functions to be performed such as maintaining the inventory of exhibits and the lists of media files. The intention is to use the database as the master data store from which the xml files are either constructed or exported, if that facility exists within the given RDBMS. The media files will also be saved to the correct location in the file system. This function will be available as part of the administration system and will be accessible when the system is off-line. The system implementation schedule will see version 1 of the system deployed when the Manchester Communicates Gallery opens. This will comprise basic visitor location detection and delivery of exhibit information reflecting their current location. Later enhancements to the system will adapt to the context provided by the visitor’s journey through the gallery (user exhibit history). The final version of the system will differentiate between users to distinguish between adults, teachers, pupils etc., and deliver information that is appropriate to them.
VI. SUMMARY This paper has highlighted the importance and potential of context driven information systems for use within museums. Building upon previous research work, an architecture for a new visitor information system, called mi-Guide, that will soon be launched as part of the “Manchester Communicates” Gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has been presented and the system architecture explained.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors are grateful to the EPSRC who have funded this work, firstly under the Multimedia Networked Applications Programme as Grant GR/L 05129, "High bandwidth mobile multimedia communication systems for field engineers in the utility industry" and then the Distributed Information Management Programme as Grant EPSRC Grant GR/N35823, "Intelligent Optimisation of Information Processing for Context Aware Environments" and now under the Partnerships for Public Engagement Programme as grant EPSRC Grant (EP/D504686/1) “Engaging with Communications”.
REFERENCES [1]
[2]
Hope, M., Linge, N., 2000. Improving co-operative working in the Utility Industry through mobile context aware geographic information systems. In ACM Geographic Information Systems 2000, 8th International Symposium of Geographic Information Systems. Washington DC, 10th–11th November 2000. pp 135–140. Bates, D., Linge, N. Hope, M., 2002. Context Aware Information Services for Mobile Workers. In PGNet 2002, 3rd Annual Postgraduate Symposium on The Convergence of Telecommunications, Networking & Broadcasting, 17-18th June 2002, Liverpool John Moores University, ISBN 1 902560 086, pp 390-395.
[3]
Schmidt, A., M. Beigl, and H. Gellersen, There is More to Context than Location. Computer & Graphics, 1999. 23: p. 893-901.
[4]
Dey, A.K., Understanding and Using Context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2001. 5(1): p. 4-7.
[5]
Dey, A.K. and G.D. Abowd. Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. in CHI 2000, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2000. The Hague, The Netherlands
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
Strang, T. and C. Linnhoff-Popien. Service Interoperability on Context Level in Ubiquitous Computing Environments. in International Conference on Advances in Infrastructure for Electronic Business, Education, Science, Medicine, and Mobile Technologies on the Internet. 2003. L'Aquila, Italy. Hope M., Chrisp T. and Linge N., Improving working practices within the Utility industry through mobile context aware geographic information systems, 2000, 8th International Symposium of ACMGIS, Washington D.C., USA, November 10th-11th 2000. Bates, D., Linge, N. Ritchings, T., Chrisp T., 2003. Designing a Context-Aware Distributed System – Asking the Key Questions. In Proceedings of the 2nd IASTED International Conference on Communications, Internet and Information Technology. Scottsdale, Arizona, Nov 17-19th 2003. pp 361-371. Bates, D., Linge, N., Hope M., Ritchings T., 2004. A Proposed Model for a Context Aware Distributed System. In IWUC 2004, 1st International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing, Porto, Portugal, April 13th-14th 2004, pp 180-194. Bourret R., XML and Databases, 2006, [Online] Available from : http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/XMLDatabaseProds.htm#xmlanddatab ases [Cited 06/04/2006]
