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Deliverable D8.5

Inter-piloting Assessment

Document Number: CONNECT-CIP-325094/SPECIFI/WP8/D8.5/311015

Contractual Date of Delivery: 31/10/2015

Authors: Tim Wauters

David Cassany Viladomat

Makis Stamatelatos (Editor)

Workpackage: 8

Distribution / Type: PU

Version: Final

Total Number of Pages: 37

Abstract

D8.5 concludes WP8 work on inter-piloting and provides assessment of the implemented

procedures based on the respective inter-piloting scenarios evaluation findings. Moreover, FI-WARE

and FI-CONTENT platforms are presented and w.r.t. to adding value to Creative Ring and the inter-

piloting scenarios.

SPECIFI Deliverable D8.5 2/37

Executive summary

The objective of WP8 is to explore and address, at different abstraction levels (from network, over platforms and applications to user level), the necessary aspects within the European Creative Ring environment in order to address certain re-usability and re-deployment scenarios of specific parts of the SPECIFI pilots in inter-piloting activities.

In previous deliverables, work has been reported on the required concepts, the framework definitions and component models (D8.1 [1]), leading to the presentation of an abstraction layer incorporating information regarding end devices, supported network types and applications under development in the pilot activities (D8.2 [2]), in close collaboration with WP3 and the pilot WPs (WP4, WP5, and WP6). The initial ideas and realization options for inter-piloting scenarios have been fine-tuned later on and, in addition, the process for decision making on deployment options and adaptation selection has been refined and architectural guidelines and feedback mechanisms to pilots have been proposed (D8.3 [3]). First ideas on the assessment and evaluation of the inter-pilot activities have been introduced as well, as a valuable source of input for further pilot refinement and for ECRA refinement at the same time. D8.4 [7] fine-tuned the inter-pilot scenarios, deployment options and adaptation decisions, related to the provisioning of services within the local creative rings and the ECR, in line with the proposed CR architecture, based on feedback on the technical scenario realizations that are currently being undertaken.

The WP8 final deliverable, D8.5, then focuses on a combined consideration of the evaluation of the selected inter-pilot activities to provide final feedback towards the CR, focusing on the influence of internationalisation on the perceived quality of experience by end users.

To this end, we first recall the inter-piloting scenarios and we report on their status and the availability of evaluation data. Before going into more details on the scenarios outcomes, we examine the validity of the recommendation provided in D8.4 on how to better combine the types of use case internationalisation and the platform exchange. In the context of CR, platforms are the essential capacities and infrastructures providing services and applications to CIs and end-users. Therefore, platform exchange has been identified as of essential importance of scenarios replication and extension, within the context of CR. We come to challenge the recommendations mentioned, against the actual implementations of the scenarios considered.

Next, we provide a summary of the technical actions and the user feedback for each individual inter-piloting scenario focusing on the objectives served by the implementation of each scenario, the platforms which were utilised/exchanged/extended and the respective experience. Indicative snapshots of the scenarios realisation are presented.

An important outcome of the deliverable is the evaluation of the decision making process and the inter-piloting activities and results as experienced by users and other stakeholders. A set of user questions (defined in D8.4) was re-structured to form three more generic indicator categories as different forms and questions were used for the evaluation of each scenario – due to varying nature and objectives of the scenarios considered. Using the inputs from the deliverables mentioned thus by comparing the usability, end user experience and stakeholder experience for the local pilots with the inter-pilot scenarios we came up with general answers per indicator category.

Last but not least, we elaborated on mapping CR scenarios to Future Internet platforms – specifically FIWARE and FIContent – aiming at highlighting that available FI tools (e.g. generic enablers from FIWARE and specific enablers from FIContent) could facilitate the CR activities.


Contributors

First Name Last Name Company Email

David Cassany I2CAT [email protected]

Makis Stamatelatos NKUA [email protected]

Tim Wauters iMinds [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]




Acronyms

Acronym Meaning

API Application Programmable Interface

App Application

AV Audio Visual

CI Creative Industry

CR Creative Ring

DMP Digital Media Platform

GE Generic Enabler

GUI Graphical User Interface

IoT Internet of Things

QoE Quality of Experience

QoS Quality of Service

SE Specific Enabler


Table of Contents

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 8 2 Inter-piloting scenarios ............................................................................................................................ 9 2.1 Inter-pilot scenario selection for assessment ............................................................................................ 9 2.2 Topics for inter-piloting assessment........................................................................................................ 12 3 Inter-piloting scenarios outcomes ......................................................................................................... 15 3.1 Overview .................................................................................................................................................. 15 3.2 Athens Playground .................................................................................................................................. 16

3.2.1 Technical feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 16 3.2.2 User assessment ............................................................................................................................. 16

3.3 IoTogether ............................................................................................................................................... 17 3.3.1 Technical feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 18 3.3.2 User assessment ............................................................................................................................. 18

3.4 Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education .............................................................. 19 3.4.1 Technical feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 19 3.4.2 User assessment ............................................................................................................................. 20

3.5 Annotated Video in Kortrijk Design/Media School .................................................................................. 21 3.5.1 Technical feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 21 3.5.2 User assessment ............................................................................................................................. 22

3.6 Distributed Environment for Music Production ...................................................................................... 22 3.6.1 Technical feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 23 3.6.2 User assessment ............................................................................................................................. 23

4 User assessment for inter-piloting ......................................................................................................... 25 4.1 Grouping User questions ......................................................................................................................... 25 4.2 User assessment for Type 1 internationalisation (replication) ................................................................ 26 4.3 User assessment for Type-2 of internationalisation (extension)............................................................. 27 5 Application on Future Internet Platforms .............................................................................................. 29 5.1 Objectives ................................................................................................................................................ 29 5.2 Platforms overview .................................................................................................................................. 29

5.2.1 FI-WARE .......................................................................................................................................... 29 5.2.2 FI-Content ....................................................................................................................................... 31

5.3 Architectural models ............................................................................................................................... 32 5.3.1 FI-WARE – Athens Playground ........................................................................................................ 32 5.3.2 IoTogether – FIWARE ...................................................................................................................... 33 5.3.3 FI-Content – Annotated video ........................................................................................................ 34 5.3.4 FI-Content – Distributed Environment for Music Production ......................................................... 34

6 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................... 36 7 References ............................................................................................................................................ 37


Figures

Figure 1: Setting-up Athens Playground. .............................................................................................................. 17

Figure 2: Promoting and playing Athens Playground. .......................................................................................... 17

Figure 3: IoTogether in action............................................................................................................................... 19

Figure 4: Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education – setting up and in-action. .................. 21

Figure 5: Distributed Environment for Music Production scenario. ..................................................................... 24

Figure 6: FI-WARE overview. ................................................................................................................................ 30

Figure 7: FI-Content Technical platform – main enablers and their functions. .................................................... 31

Figure 8: Creacity – FIWARE architectural model. ................................................................................................ 33

Figure 9: IoTogether architectural model. ............................................................................................................ 34


Tables

Table 1: Final overview of the inter-piloting scenarios considered for assessment. ............................................ 10

Table 2: Internationalisation at Use Case x Platforms levels. ............................................................................... 13

Table 3: Platform Exchange Models. .................................................................................................................... 13

Table 4: User questions and grouping. ................................................................................................................. 25

Table 5: Outcomes - User assessment for replication. ......................................................................................... 27

Table 6: Outcomes - User assessment for extension. ........................................................................................... 27


1 Introduction The objective of D8.5 is to provide an overarching assessment of the inter-piloting activities based on the corresponding evaluations of each individual inter-piloting scenario. The assessment is provided at technical level (i.e. according to the final selections and technical adaptations for each scenario) and at user level (i.e. according to the users feedback on each scenario). This way, the technical selections are assessed against (i) the theoretical recommendations provided by WP8 to each inter-piloting scenario and (ii) the actual user perception which reflects, among others, the level and the quality of replication/extension achieved in each scenario.

In Section 2 we summarize the inter-piloting scenarios which have been completed and have been considered for the assessment. We also present the outcome of internationalisation analysis performed in D8.4 i.e. which type of platform exchange was eventually selected for the appropriate level of efficiency for each inter-piloting scenario.

In Section 3 we present the outcomes of the inter-piloting scenarios considered w.r.t. their technical feasibility and user assessment.

In Section 4 we evaluate the decision making process by comparing the usability, end user experience and stakeholder experience for the local pilots with the inter-pilot scenarios. In the previous deliverable D8.4, a set of user questions has been defined in order to allow making this assessment. The outcome of the questionnaire is summarized in the following sections, for each inter-pilot scenario, categorized as one of both types of internationalisation.

Finally, in section 5 we assess the value of several Future Internet large-scale platforms, specifically the FI-WARE and the FI-Content initiatives. We provided a concise description of each platform and we identified the appropriate components which could facilitate SPECIFI scenarios.


2 Inter-piloting scenarios According to the initial plan the inter-piloting scenarios would not have matured enough to offer evaluation results but more generic inter-piloting assessment. However the project extension (from end of June to end of November 2015) offered longer time for data gathering and analysis and therefore made the evaluation possible.

In this section, therefore, we just recall the inter-piloting scenarios – their key data – and we try also to validate the inter-piloting platform exchange recommendation, which we provided in D8.4.

2.1 Inter-pilot scenario selection for assessment In WP8 (D8.3 [3]), we defined a number of inter-piloting scenarios, which we used, among other things, for refining the requirements for platform adaptations necessary for internationalisation (i.e. defining and implementing use cases within the Creative Ring). In this section, we recall the inter-piloting scenarios, and we provide information about their final status and the availability of evaluation reports.

Table 1: Final overview of the inter-piloting scenarios considered for assessment.

Scenario/

Reference

Cities, Hubs, Projects and partners

Involved Tools, Platforms and Apps

Idea at a glance Scenario Status Evaluation data

Athens Playground

www.athensPlaygound.gr

Cities: Kortrijk, Athens

Partners: iMinds, NKUA, Athenian Creative Industries

Users: citizens and visitors of Athens city centre

Support: City of Athens Municipality (InAthens, Syn-Athena)

Platforms: MediaHaven, CreaCity Platform

App: Creacity App

Exploring interesting points and Creative Industries within the city of Athens using the smart phone app, challenges, tokens and experiences.

Replication of Playground Kortrijk pilot scenario.

Completed Available

IoTogether

http://iotogether.compose-project.eu/

Cities: Trento, Barcelona

Partners: CREATE-NET, MuSe, BCNLab, I2CAT

Creative Industries: Internet of Things (IoT) community

Users: Hackers, makers, geeks, designers

Platforms: Digital Media Platform (Low Latency AV)

IoT Tools: sensors data aggregators, actuators.

FabLab tools

Cooperatively build "networked projects" able to communicate with apps over the internet, on wearable and smart environments.

Extension of scenarios build using Digital Media Platform, Barcelona Hub, joint creation projects

Completed Available

Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education

Cities: Trento, Barcelona

Creative industries: cultural and education entities

Partners: Create-Net, I2CAT, MuSe

Users: Visitors

Apps: UltraGrid, Digital Media Platform (Low Latency AV)_

3-D technologies: 3D camera, 3D display and capture hardware, 3D synchronization software, 3D display screens.

A new approach of immersive and realistic remote visits of museums by using ICT technologies.

Extension and combination of scenarios of DMP at Barcelona Hub and scenarios of Trento Hub

Completed Available

http://www.athensplaygound.gr/

http://www.athensplaygound.gr/





Scenario/

Reference

Cities, Hubs, Projects and partners

Involved Tools, Platforms and Apps

Idea at a glance Scenario Status Evaluation data

Annotated Video in Kortrijk Design/Media School

Cities: Trento, Kortrijk

Partners: Interplay Software, Video/content Providers, Municipality of the city of Kortrijk, Buda Arts Centre,

Users: Howest University College

Platforms: VideoVivo portal, Google Analytics Server, Streaming Video Server

Creating rich media presentations in an 'eLearning' scenario; enable students developing creative storytelling abilities and implementing interactive video projects.

Replication of scenarios of platforms from Trento Hub to Kortrijk City.

Partially completed

Available

Distributed Environment for Music Production

Cities: Barcelona, Berlin

Creative industries: music production communities

Partners: i2CAT, Barcelona Creative Industries, MTF organization, Stromatolite

Users: musicians, music producers

Apps: Digital Media Platform

Tools: Musical studio facilities

Creating an artistic network of resources and artists devoted to music production allowing them to conduct musical productions in distributed environments connecting lead music producers with different sound studio facilities.

Extension and combination of scenarios of DMP at Barcelona Hub and tools at Berlin Hub

Completed Available

2.2 Topics for inter-piloting assessment Architectural guidelines reflect the feedback to and from the pilot in evaluation loops in order to identify, estimate and detect the needed effort and actions between partners to successfully exchange targeted technologies and perform any needed customization towards scenarios internationalisation, a key enabler for the Creative Ring.

In WP3 (D3.4 [4]), different types of internationalisation scenarios were introduced, each with different possible needs for technical and service adaptations. In this deliverable, we provide feedback on those requirements (in section 4), following the actual deployments of the inter-pilot use cases in the field.

The two types of internationalisation that are important for our work are the following:

Type 1- Replication: internationalisation focuses on replication of pilot scenarios. Replication can be

o Partial replication: some platforms or features are excluded;

o Basic replication: A use case is copied to a different setting, location or region “as is”;

o Rescaled replication: make it available to more, users, applying different QoS, etc.;

In order to facilitate inter-piloting assessment, in WP8 we only considered “Replication” as a single internationalisation type; this type includes the “Athens Playground” and the “Annotated Video on Kortrijk Design/Media School” scenarios;

Type 2 – Extension: additional components are added to generate a new use case; internationalisation looks into the extension and/or co-creation of scenarios, such as “IoTogether”, “Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education” and “Distributed Environment for Music Production”.

At platform level, three types of inter-piloting have been identified (from WP8, [2]):

Partial exchange: deploy or install a platform (or a component of it) to a different pilot city to be used as it is; adaptations are considered in order to ensure a successful deployment in different contexts;

Virtual exchange: platforms or components are integrated remotely involving further platform developments to integrate different APIs;

Physical exchange: some platform is physically sent to another pilot city or being replicated at hardware and software level.

Aiming at internationalisation, the following platform requirements are applicable to almost all possible types of internationalisation. Even in basic or partial use case replication certain level of interworking with local platforms might be required e.g. for better performance:

Higher capacity in order to cope with the larger public addressed;

Capability to cope with an international environment (language, content, IPR, legal);

Interworking with other platforms – adaptable APIs, data types etc.

In D8.4 we concluded on a template (Table 2) in order to rank whether certain types of platform exchange might be more appropriate for use case internationalisation (where the preferred choice is indicated as “1”). In D8.5, we enrich the table and we provide the actual choices made within each inter-piloting scenario considered w.r.t the platform exchange approach given the internationalisation (use case re-realisation) identified.


Table 2: Internationalisation at Use Case x Platforms levels.

Platform-level Partial exchange Virtual exchange Physical exchange

Use Case level

Basic replication 2 1 3

Partial replication 2 1 3

Rescaled replication 1 2 3

Extension 3 2 1

The following choices have been reported:

Athens Playground is considered a (rescaled) replication as it has been estimated that the app would be made available to more users. At platform level exchange, local hosting of CreaCity platform was eventually chosen to cope with possible latency issues – as it has already been mentioned. The scenario has been implemented with a partial exchange as not all components were needed for this replication.

For Annotated Video in Kortrijk, which is a (partial) replication type scenario internationalisation, the VideoVivo platform in Trento was accessed remotely by the students in Kortrijk, through local Web-based tools to "make" the content and "play" it out – thus the scenario implemented the virtual exchange option.

IoTogether proceeded with a partial exchange as the software was deployed locally,

Immersive 3D scenario proceeded with a partial exchange as the software was deployed locally

Distributed Environment for Music Production was a physical exchange: own equipment and platform was transferred from Barcelona Hub to Berlin.

These findings are presented in Table 3 in comparison to the recommended platform exchange model (from D8.4, Table 2).

Table 3: Platform Exchange Models.

Scenario Platform exchange (D8.4)

Platform exchange implemented

Deviation – comment

Athens Playground Partial exchange Partial exchange -

Annotated Video in Kortrijk

Virtual exchange Virtual exchange -

IoTogether Physical exchange Partial exchange Although the scenario was identified as an extension internationalisation it can be a partial replication of the “in-Hub” usage of the platforms (i.e. the usage of the platform when realising the in-Hub scenarios) which were combined to produce the scenario.

Immersive 3D Physical exchange Partial exchange Although the scenario was identified as an extension


Scenario Platform exchange (D8.4)

Platform exchange implemented

Deviation – comment

internationalisation it can be a basic replication of the “in-Hub” usage of the platforms (i.e. the usage of the platform when realising the in-Hub scenarios) which were combined to produce the scenario.

Distributed Environment for Music Production

Physical exchange Physical exchange -


3 Inter-piloting scenarios outcomes This section provides a concise report on the outcomes and the evaluation of each inter-piloting scenario separately, at user level assessment, technical feasibility and how-to for future scenarios.

3.1 Overview Inter-piloting has been identified and formalised within SPECIFI project in order to facilitate Creative Ring activities, which include, among other co-creation and scenario exchange. To this end, the inter-piloting scenarios developed are of different nature and scope, with different objectives and different way(s) of implementation. More important, in order to achieve the different objectives of the scenarios, different aspects of the inter-piloting (and the Creative Ring in consequence) are exploited.

In this sense, Athens Playground scenario has been formalised as a scenario replication from the Kortrijk Creative Hub, targeting different audience (different culture and mentality, language, habits, etc.) and possible larger volume of users. So, additional bugs and other operational issues at platform and application have been identified and resolved. Moreover, maintaining the user satisfaction level and quality of experience is another objective, at user level.

At platform level, the CreaCity platform, developed within Kortrijk Creative Hub, has evolved to capture outcomes and findings resulted from piloting activities in Kortrijk and test them during the inter-piloting activities in Athens. The CreaCity platform has supported the replication of Playground Kortrijk piloting scenario towards realising the Athens Playground, an inter-piloting activity outside the initial SPECIFI creative ring scope. The Athens Playground App has been developed according to identified user context and needs in Athens. The scenario implemented in Athens from June to October 2015.

The Digital Media Platform (DMP) of the Barcelona Creative Hub has evolved during the project thanks to several different events within and beyond the Barcelona pilot’s scope, which forced using the technology in different scenarios interacting with different technologies and technical staff. Thanks to the gathered feedback, knowledge and experience, Barcelona Hub's technologies are now more interoperable and easy to integrate, leading to a more compact and homogeneous prototype of the DMP.

Inter-piloting has been an important focus of the activities involving the Digital Media Platform in the SPECIFI project, developed and tested within the framework of the Barcelona Creative Hub. The inter-piloting trajectory with the DMP technologies has been composed by three successive interconnected actions. These actions were conceived as incremental testing actions, in which the outcomes of the previous would inform the planning of the following. These actions were the following:

IoTogether distributed hackathon (Trento-Barcelona, 20th September 2014)

Distributed Environment for Music Production (Berlin-Barcelona, 24-26th October 2014)

Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education proof-of-concept test (12-16th January 2015)

The technologies involved in each event have been tested with different levels of user interaction which is valuable in order to gather feedback from different perspectives. It helps a lot in order to draw how should be the future work and technical improvements that should be taken into consideration beyond the project scope.

From Trento Creative Hub, the VideoVivo platform has been used to implement interactive video projects at the city of Kortrijk, specifically in the Howest School, assisted by a School and Interplay Software teams; input and goals have been set by the Municipality of Kortrijk. The scenario was


implemented following two inter-piloting sessions, in second half of 2014 and in first half of 2015 respectively.

Although not many purely technical challenges were encountered in the instantiation of VideoVivo in another city, Kortrijk, still a lot was learned from the experience. The inter-piloting activity initiated an upgrade in terms of user-friendliness of the platform in an e-learning context, adaptations to the tutorials and improved templates for planning, management and training of different user groups than originally targeted.

3.2 Athens Playground This is the first inter-piloting activity implemented extending the SPECIFI creative ring (i.e. adding another pilot-city to the three SPECIFI pilot cities and hubs). The scenario implemented in Athens city from June to mid-October attracting more than 400 people who registered in the platform and played the game, as detailed in WP4 reports [5].

The scenario involved among others Athens Creative Industries, Athens Municipality organisations, the iMinds Team for technical support and the NKUA Team as coordinating the various activities.

3.2.1 Technical feasibility

At platform level we chose to host the CreaCity back-end platform in Athens for latency purposes – among others. The number of users didn’t cause a challenge in the platform resources and capabilities so no further adaptation was required.

The main technical activities and adaptations included, at platform and application levels were:

Support Greek text and fonts,

Translate description in Greek,

Deploy-host CreaCity back end in NKUA premises in Athens,

App submission to the app store and i-store,

Resolve a number of back and front end issues emerged through live testing and early scenario lifetime.

3.2.2 User assessment

At user level, user questionnaires were composed, based on and questionnaires developed for the Playground Kortrijk evaluation, in order to facilitate inter-piloting assessment: successful and efficient deployment and adaptation at platform and application level could be reflected at increased user experience from the scenario and its components (i.e. the CreaCity platform and the Athens Playground application, mainly).

The service was experimented in a real-life setting together with the support and involvement of the Athenian Creative Industries, (e.g. Romantso, an incubator for creativity), Organisations of the Athens Municipality which were contacted as potential service adopters/providers.

Testing activities took place during May 2015 in the University of Athens campus, where the interaction with the platform and the various scenario actions were tested. Certain issues were identified at platform and app level which were addressed by the iMinds/CreaCity developers teams.

In conclusion, the Athens Playground inter-piloting helped us to validate (i) the partial replication at scenario level, (ii) the local deployment at platform level and (iii) the adaptation to local user context at application level resulted in a successful set up and realisation of the scenario.

Based on the user evaluation outcomes which are reported in WP4 [5] we concluded that the Athens Playground has been a successful inter-piloting activity. More details to follow in section 4.


Figure 1: Setting-up Athens Playground.

Figure 2: Promoting and playing Athens Playground.

3.3 IoTogether This is the first inter-piloting that took place in Barcelona Creative Hub, the IoTogether distributed hackathon, held between Trento and Barcelona on the 20th of September, 2014. About thirty people


worked together and simultaneously from Barcelona and Trento (Italy) on September 20th, to find IoT useful solutions for smart cities.

The event involved makers, designers and hackers interested in the Internet of Things (IoT), and it aimed at developing wearables and smart environments projects during an intensive (9am-9pm) day of work and play. Besides the main goal of the hackathon, the highlight of the event was the real-time interaction among participants in each of the cities. Communication was made possible thanks to the Internet of Things videoconferencing tool provided by SPECIFI. This tool was a very slight adaptation of the Digital Media Platform that had been defined as the main use case in Barcelona’s SPECIFI pilot.


AV Low Latency (based on UltraGrid technology) was the default end-client for capturing and displaying high quality audio and video streams. The overall available bandwidth was up to 50~100Mbps, which wasn’t that much taking into account that for real time applications no buffering can be applied in encoders in order to perform good motion estimations and then achieve the best compression ratios. We had to take into account that there were about nine (9) permanent video conferences, plus one or two sporadic streams during speeches, so high bandwidth was consumed.

Because of the bandwidth limits the technology was enhanced with the inclusion of a resize capture filter function, which made possible to tune many media parameters of the video conference on the fly. This feature was needed in order to provide a real-time streaming solution that can modify camera resolution in order to provide lower quality and consume less bandwidth regardless the camera or capturer parameters. Thanks to that it was possible to guarantee the communication even if it was via a video quality reduction cost.

On the other hand it was still possible to increase quality sporadically, which helped a lot when the teams had to showcase or explain the gadgets built in each site.

An interesting feedback gathered during the event among several of the technicians that were responsible of the whole infrastructure, was that beyond the video conferencing system it was also really valuable to enable some sort of chat application. When dealing with simultaneous IT teams preparing an event and having to cooperate to configure IT services, it was noted that a very simple and robust communication channel was useful to exchange asynchronous feedback of what was going on in each site.


The focus of the inter-piloting evaluation was in measuring the adequacy of the DMP in a scenario of deployment of the platform to support the interactions of participants in an international distributed hackathon. Another point to be taken into consideration was the participant’s feedback as regards any improvements or request for additional functionalities. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants, administered right after the event. This feedback was complemented with data from direct assessment reports, collected by the hackathon organisers and support team throughout the duration of the hackathon.

Overall, the service received a fairly positive rating, with 62% of participants having declared being interested in using the videoconferencing service again in a project of their own. The average satisfaction score was 6.83 over 10. These test results were heavily impacted by the very negative ratings given by some participants who had technical problems due to network connectivity issues, and could not use the technology during certain periods of time. Those who experienced little or no technical problems gave satisfaction scores over 7, which can be regarded as a fairly good mark.


In additional to these inter-piloting-specific statistics, a set of recommendations for additional functionalities for the DMP was provided by the hackathon participants. The main conclusions to be taken from this initial test was that it revealed the importance of working to increase the quality of experience of the user interfaces, and of adequately assessing the risks of network connectivity problems in public events

Figure 3: IoTogether in action.

3.4 Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education The inter-piloting trajectory of the Barcelona Hub was finally closed with an explorative proof of concept test, designed to probe new grounds for the adoption of the DMP in new inter-piloting scenarios in the area of cultural heritage. The proposed scenario posed a new approach of immersive and realistic remote visits of museums. The scenario made use of the latest 3D technologies and advanced communication infrastructures to research on remote 3D visits of museums. The main objective was to find a system capable of allowing visitors in one museum, visualizing in an immersive way objects that are located in another museum. This experience had to be in real-time, allowing interaction between visitors and the personnel in charge of the tour.


The biggest technical challenge of this event was to explore and test the 3D technology compatibility of all devices and software. Note that prior this event the 3D compatibility of the software was only tested with offline videos, without using a professional stereoscopic camera. The AV Low Latency system (based on UltraGrid) used Blackmagic Decklink cards in order to capture or reproduce 3D streams, so testing the compatibility with the 3D Camera and Blackmagic, and with the Blackmagic and UltraGrid software on transmitter side was already a challenge. The same happened on the receiver side with the 3D TV screens that had to be compatible with the UltraGrid and related hardware.


Note that there are several stereoscopic transmission standards (Side by Side, Top Bottom and different types of interleaved transmissions) available on the market. Therefore it was not trivial to find professional hardware (cameras and TV screens) that was compatible with UltraGrid supported standards.

Finally, as a backup solution, an additional feature was developed in UltraGrid, i.e. share filter. This filter defined an interface to share data between different processes of the same host, in case there would be some issue with software and hardware compatibilities. However, in the end it was not necessary to use this filter, because it was possible to find a compatible stereoscopic hardware for the AV Low Latency system.

Finally some the stereoscopic technology limits were experimented. During the tests two different behaviours were observed depending on the distance between the camera and the captured object or point of focus. In distances under 2m approximately, any object was seemed to be placed inside the screen window, however in distances higher than 2m objects were emerging out of the screen window. This helped the creative people significantly to define different aspects to be shown during demonstrations, and gave them more freedom regarding the storytelling aspects.


For realising this action, a proof of concept inter-piloting test was proposed between the Trento and Barcelona hubs. This PoC operated at different levels: network infrastructure configuration and requirements, evaluation of user experience and 3D contents visualization, and technical viability of the solution proposed. The several different elements involved in this project (3D camera, 3D display and capture hardware, video network transmission software, among others) were combined in order to propose a single use case to be tested under real conditions. In this event, the evaluation focus was placed both on the validation of the technical configurations and assessment of the new features, which were implemented to address the comments and suggestions made by the users in the previous action.

The service was experimented in a real setting together with the support and involvement of the Museum of Science in Trento (MuSe) and the Fabra i Coats venue in Barcelona, as service validators and as potential service adopters. The testing trajectory took place in the week of the 12th of January 2015. The activity was mainly focused on the setup of a 3D videoconference where attendees share an immersive experience based on 3D object visualization (3D cameras and 3D glasses). Some simple examples of how the system is capable of emulating the three-dimensional feeling in the user and how user perceptions are affected by it were presented, in order to evaluate potential usage of such technology as a support for cultural and educational activities.

In conclusion, the 3D conference between MUSE in Trento and Fabra i Coats in Barcelona validated that the proposed scenario could be successfully setup. The quality of the video was very good and the 3D feeling perceived by the participants was very strong on both sides, even if limited to the monitor area. MUSE director and MUSE ITC manager were both impressed by the result, and proposed further investigation and future joint collaboration for realising the potential of artistic experiences based on the inter-piloted technologies.


Figure 4: Immersive 3D Visualisation System for Culture and Education – setting up and in-action.

3.5 Annotated Video in Kortrijk Design/Media School In this inter-pilot initiative, the VideoVivo Storytelling Platform from Trento was provisioned at the city of Kortrijk. Interplay Software, creators of the VideoVivo platform, worked together with Howest University (a media/design school), providing the school’s students access to the platform and supporting them with training and overall assistance, and allowing them to create interactive video content. In a close cooperation effort, Howest received strong and online support from Interplay Software for engaging in a novel kind of content creation, whilst Howest provided Interplay with new insights on the use of the platform from real users.


The main challenge of this scenario was not technical, as the technical instantiation of the platform in another context is rather uncomplicated. The main tests focused on making the platform user-friendly enough for non-technical users, in an e-learning environment, in order to develop the users’ creativity and storytelling abilities.

The goal of the inter-pilot activity was the implementation of interactive video projects with the Videovivo platform by students of in the Howest School, assisted by a local coordinator and Interplay personnel, and based on input and goals set by the Municipality of Kortrijk.

The subject of the video project was to make a video guide for people who do not understand Dutch and who come to live in Kortrijk. It should give them the best information they can get on what they need administratively and also about social help, culture, tourism, care, education for their kids, etc.

Following a briefing on 19th April, planning activities occurred before the actual project start-up. Also, revised and extended training material (slide-set) was provided to the students (describing all the updates made to the platform since 2014 session), and at the kick-off the capabilities of the tool


was illustrated to student by the coordinator (who took part to the first inter-piloting session in second half 2014). Three groups of students started working on the implementation of the video:

Last week of May: Students wrote scenarios and storyboards.

First week of June: Students busy filming.

Second week of June: Students started working with VideoVivo. Accounts were created for three groups of students. A training session in conference call was held between the school and Interplay to discuss issues and questions by the students. Interplay provided clarifications about the overall approach to follow for best results, as well as how to deal with specific issues. In the following days, examples and small software utilities were provided to deal with, for example, linking different video sources, or working with graphic themes.

Students had an exam deadline on the 19th of June so implementation of the interactive feature actually went on in a rather compressed timeframe. One of the groups delivered a good result. The second group delivered a barely acceptable result, while the third did not deliver in time.

On the 25th of June a status check-up conference call was held between Dominique Viaene and Erika of Interplay.

The two videos have then been published on Interplay’ Videovivo portal, where other client projects are also showcased. The videos can be found here: http://www.videovivo.it/web/case-histories/.


The students (for explicit design choice or for shortage of time before their exam) used for the most part, only one feature of the tool i.e. the ability to change the course of the story in the video.

Based on the feedback we received, some of the difficulties they experienced were due to a misunderstanding at the beginning; that is they conceived their video as a set of separate video-clips, to be glued together by the tool (some of the groups even used static images as a ‘home’ panel to start the different clips).

So they had to spend extra effort to rework their initial work, cut differently their footage, and use the tool according to its characteristics.

A ‘social’ record of the activities done in the inter-pilot can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=VIDEOVIVO.

A record of the first inter-piloting session has been created with Storify: https://storify.com/InterplayTN/interpiloting.

Overall, the experience and collaboration with the Howest professors and students was very good. All involved parties have learned a lot from the experience, especially on the practical side (planning, management and training of different target groups than in the original pilot, etc.).

3.6 Distributed Environment for Music Production In the second inter-piloting action, SPECIFI attended the Berlin edition of the Music Tech Fest festival, held in Germany’s largest city from the 24th to the 26th of October, 2014.

This action was the confirmation that the minor problems experienced in the first had been successfully fixed, and that the DMP was now ready for deployment in inter-piloting scenarios involving complex interactions of stakeholders in multiple international locations. Videos from the distributed performances can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtun_FZjHiA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRsdWoROs-Y

http://www.videovivo.it/web/case-histories/

https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=VIDEOVIVO

https://storify.com/InterplayTN/interpiloting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtun_FZjHiA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRsdWoROs-Y



In this event the main technical issues were related to latency, as it was tested to use AV Mixer for musical performances. Obviously even the software used here was designed to add a very low delay related to process there was still the biggest issue, which was the network delay. Adding hops the audio flows (like the software audio mixer) was noted to be a very big issue for the musicians, as the delays were too high to perform normally. Because of that it turned out that the only feasible option to work around this issue was to split audio and video flows and process them differently. Audio had to be transmitted using a peer to peer communications following a ring strategy (the second musician played over the received stream of the first one and the third musician played over the stream received from the second one, which includes already the music from the first node) without allowing any sort of feedback from onwards. However, as the video signals were not that time sensitive, so those were processed following a star strategy, all the streams were sent to the AVMixer, mixed there and then the resulting stream sent to the audience client or to the distributed nodes as a feedback.

During this event the AV Mixer was enhanced with MPEG-DASH encapsulation support. Adding live streaming over HTTP feature means that the resulting stream can be displayed in any compliant browser. This feature enabled HTTP streaming directly without the need of any additional software or service; this is something that helped in order to reduce complexity when planning complex scenarios, where multiple services and applications had to be set and configured.

More on the creative side, artists suggested to include some basic effects like video channel transitions (i.e.: blend or fade in and out). This was a request from the artists after testing the AVMixer in Barcelona's pilot and explored in the Music Tech Fest also. In order to produce live events on the cloud some minimal video effects were needed, like blending transitions or fade to a black screen.


In addition to two Internet-assisted artistic performances, which have been covered in D5.5, the project participated in the Hack Camp, a 24-hour collaborative laboratory where hackers, programmers and DIY electronics enthusiasts teamed up with artists to develop innovatory music forms. The DMP technology was proposed to participants both in Berlin and online: a first positive contact was in fact established with hackers connected from Boston, US. This test experience was assessed by SPECIFI project representatives, who elicited feedback from the global participants on the merits of the inter-piloted technologies.

The verbal feedback collected after the distributed performance demo and the hands-on session was very positive, with most participants showing strong interest in the DMP. The consensus among the participants was that having a further version of an improved set of manuals and installation guides would assist greatly in meeting this increased interest, as well as being able to guarantee a sufficiently fast and stable network for the DMP to operate at top performance.


Figure 5: Distributed Environment for Music Production scenario.


4 User assessment for inter-piloting In this section, we evaluate the decision making process and the inter-piloting activities and results as experienced by users and other stakeholders. In the previous deliverable D8.4 [7], a set of user questions was defined to allow this assessment. Due to the varying nature and objectives of the inter-piloting scenarios considered, the questions identified and used for each scenario are not identical, nor are they the same as the user questions identified in D8.4. However, we elaborated in those questions and forms as they have been made available in the respective deliverables (e.g. D4.5 [5] for Athens Playground, D5.5 [6] for IoTogether, Immersive 3D and Distributed Environment for Music Production) and we chose to group those 18 questions to three (3) groups reflecting the following indicator categories:

Usability,

User experience,

Stakeholder experience.

Using the inputs from the deliverables mentioned thus by comparing the usability, end user experience and stakeholder experience for the local pilots with the inter-pilot scenarios we came up with general answers per indicator category.

Ideally, the decision making process should also be based on input on how the stakeholders (besides the users and developers) perceived the procedure of moving the original scenario to the novel inter-pilot scenario (e.g. on technical problems, managerial issues, perceived user experience, quality of the application, etc.), so that the selected type of internationalisation (in relation with the decision making tables in section 2.2) could be validated as the best suited choice. Although the forms used mainly targeted the end-users, information related to other stakeholders was provided in the reports considered; such information is included in the sections to follow, where the outcomes of the questionnaires are summarized in the following sections, for each inter-pilot scenario, categorized as one of both types of internationalisation.

4.1 Grouping User questions In the following Table 4 we present the user questions identified in D8.4 and the eventual grouping to the three (3) indicator categories.

Table 4: User questions and grouping.

Code Indicator Indicator category

US1 Degree of success of user in completing task

Usability

US2 Degree of effort user has to put in to complete task

US3 Degree of learning a user has to take to complete task

US4 Degree of satisfaction of user with the system interfaces

US5 Degree of fulfilment of user needs


Code Indicator Indicator category

EUE1 User expectations with service/event

End user experience

EUE2 Perceived satisfaction with service/event

EUE3 Perceived quality of artistic experience

EUE4 Perceived innovativeness of service/event

EUE5 Stated frequency of expected usage of service/attendance of event

EUE6 Degree to which event would be recommended to peers

EUE7 Degree to which user would be willing to pay for service/event

SE1 Stakeholder expectations with service/event

Stakeholder experience

SE2 Perceived satisfaction with service

SE3 Perceived ease of usage

SE4 Perceived degree of solution integration

SE5 Perceived degree of needs satisfaction

SE6 Perceived innovativeness of service/event

4.2 User assessment for Type 1 internationalisation (replication) Table 5 presents the findings related to the indicator categories identified, for the two scenarios under the replication internationalisation type.


Table 5: Outcomes - User assessment for replication.

Indicator

category

Athens Playground Annotated Video in Kortrijk

Usability The users reported that the app was user-friendly, easily controllable and without serious technical issues.

The instantiation of the platform in the e-

learning context in Kortrijk did not cause

any major technical difficulties, but

mainly required adaptations in terms of

user-friendliness to non-technical users.

End user

experience

The end user experience was very positive, resulting in clear enthusiasm and positive attitude towards Athens Playground, as well as a major feeling of immersiveness, fascination and competence.

The students had some complications in

terms of planning and did not use all the

available platform features. The end

results varied between the student

groups (one very good, one average and

one did not deliver).

Stakeholder

experience

Capturing outcomes from discussions between NKUA team and (i) city of Athens and (ii) Athenian CIs, both stakeholder types expressed their interest and motivation for promoting and participating. Specifically, ‘Συν-Αθηνά’, the City of Athens organisation coordinating social initiatives expressed their interest in extending the Athens Playground so as to include challenges reflecting a social foot-print (e.g. support of volunteer groups etc.) as well as to resume the game in other time periods.

Although the planning of the projects

suffered from a compressed timeframe,

the experience for both the city of

Kortrijk and the Howest professors was

very stimulating.

From this table we can learn that the results for the user assessment on the inter-pilot scenarios stemming from Type 1 internationalisation are quite similar to those for the local use cases. No strong links to local conditions are present so that no direct influence on the user satisfaction can be found, from the technical side. Practical issues can occur due to the different context the users are in (background knowledge on usage of the platform, time planning, etc.).

4.3 User assessment for Type-2 of internationalisation (extension) Table 6 presents the findings related to the indicator categories identified, for the three scenarios under the extension internationalisation type.

Table 6: Outcomes - User assessment for extension.

Question IoTogether Immersive 3D

visualization

Distributed Environment

for Music Production


Question IoTogether Immersive 3D

visualization

Distributed Environment

for Music Production

Usability During the hackathon, most participants were able to use the service, while only a few were experiencing technical issues, mainly due to intermittent connectivity problems.

Although problems were

encountered to find the

appropriate hardware, the

storytelling functions,

network configuration and

3D content visualization

worked under realistic

conditions.

Although the AV mixer

itself produces very low

delays, problems with the

larger network delay

caused the audio and

video signals to be split up

before transfer. For the

more critical audio signal,

this solved the issues.

End user

experience

A limited set of additional functionality was requested for, in comparison to the local pilot, mainly on quality of experience of user interfaces. A satisfaction level of 6.83/10 was reported, even more than 7/10 amongst participants did not suffer any connectivity issue.

The video quality and the

3D feeling were perceived

as very good by the users.

Additional functionality

was suggested (e.g.

transition effects for the

video signal), similarly as

in the original pilot

scenario. Very positive

feedback was collected by

the audience

Stakeholder

experience

The positive feedback received by the organizers confirmed the usefulness of the DMP for purposes beyond distributed performances, thus opening up new avenues for the monetisation of the technology

Involved stakeholders,

such as the museum

director and ITC manager

were impressed of the

results and proposed

further investigation and

collaboration.

Besides the audience, also

the musicians were very

interested in the AVMixer

for live productions.

For inter-pilot use cases from the other types (mainly Type 2, using extension and co-creation), no direct comparison to the original scenario was possible, as the service offerings have changed, sometimes considerably, during the project. However, similar requests for functionality upgrades have been requested as for the local initiatives and the overall feedback on user experience was very positive, as in the original scenarios.


5 Application on Future Internet Platforms

5.1 Objectives In this section we aim at studying the feasibility of possible interactions between the platforms and the scenario layout forming certain SPECIFI scenarios and certain ultra-fast platforms providing Future Internet (FI) features, services and capabilities. We are investigating, specifically, the FI-WARE [8] and the FI-Content [9] initiatives.

The idea behind this is to initially investigate whether (i) whether the scenarios realisation is modular enough and (ii) figure out whether more generic software tools can facilitate the CR scenario realisation.

In this sense, we will describe each platform and then we will provide indicative scenarios realisation blueprints using the appropriate components which could facilitate those SPECIFI scenarios.

5.2 Platforms overview

5.2.1 FI-WARE

The FIWARE platform provides a rather simple yet powerful set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that ease the development of Smart Applications in multiple vertical sectors. The specifications of these APIs are public and royalty-free. Besides, an open source reference implementation of each of the FIWARE components is publicly available so that multiple FIWARE providers can emerge faster in the market with a low-cost proposition.

The FIWARE Catalogue contains a rich library of components which are called Generic Enablers (GEs) with reference implementations that allow developers to put into effect functionalities such as the connection to the Internet of Things or Big Data analysis, thus making programming much easier.

GEs offer a number of general-purpose functions, offered through well-defined APIs. The GEs can be used for facilitating application development or extension, in multiple sectors. All the GEs as well as the specifications of the APIs have been made publicly available, royalty-free and open-source.

The following diagram depicts the schema behind the FI-WARE platform, the Generic Enablers, and the roles interacting with the system.


Figure 6: FI-WARE overview.

The GEs have been organized in the following groups:

Developer Community and Tools Architecture: to offer a multi-functional development environment - FI-CoDE - enabling the development and management of the Future Internet Applications (FIApp) built to address the needs of the Future Internet and based on the adoption and integration of the Generic Enablers Implementations.

Applications, Services and Data Delivery: to build an ecosystem of applications, services and data that is sustainable and fosters innovation as well as cross-fertilization.

Business Framework: to describe in a common uniform format the technical and the business aspects of a service, together with functional and non-functional service attributes.

Application Mashup: to allow end users without programming skills to quickly compose beautiful web applications and dashboards/cockpits mashing up widgets, operators and data sources from a shared catalogue.

Data Visualisation: to create agile, beautiful visualizations and meaningful reports useful to present the large variety of datasets. Data stakeholders will bring in the play as well as providing customisable data analytics.

Data/Context Management: to ease development and provision of innovative Applications that require gathering, publication, processing and exploitation of information and data streams in real-time and at massive scale.

Interface to Networks and Devices (I2ND): to define an enabler space for providing Generic Enablers (GEs) to run an open and standardized network infrastructure.

Internet of Things (IoT) Services Enablement: IoT Gateway provides inter-networking and protocol conversion functionalities between devices and the IoT Backend GEs; IoT Backend GEs provide management functionalities for the devices and IoT domain-specific support for the applications.


Cloud Hosting: to comprise the foundation for designing a modern cloud hosting infrastructure that can be used to develop, deploy and manage Future Internet applications and services.

Security: to deliver tools and techniques to have the above-mentioned security needs properly met. Furthermore a decision making support and the automation of countermeasures allow alleviating the workload of users and administrators while raising their security awareness.

Advanced Web-based User Interface: to cover a set of GEs that provide an advanced user experience using HTML-5 and a Web-based UI approach.

5.2.2 FI-Content

Major European and global companies and research centres joined their skills in the FI-Content initiative, as part of the FI-PPP programme phase 2, to drive innovation at the crossroads of content, media, networks and creativity. Because of that in FI-Content scope the component present in its library are called Specific Enablers (SEs). This initiative aimed at developing and experimenting across Europe cutting edge ICT platforms devoted to applications and services in the areas of Social connected TV, Smart city services, and Pervasive games. These platforms are opened to be used by any project, developer or SME that aim to enhance their business, presence or experience in Internet. FI-Content partners, including several technological and creative companies and research centres, provide support to these cutting edge technologies in order to go well with and help any early adopter. Therefore, the core activity in FI-Content has been to deliver a common technical platform that application providers can use to build, host and operate content applications for their end users.

Different sets of real-world experimentation of the platform for each of the three targeted application areas (Social connected TV, Smart city services and Pervasive games) were planned and conducted in 6 European locations: Brittany (France), Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona, Zurich and Lancaster. The overall objective of the initiative is to allow the largest community of European developers, SMEs, web entrepreneurs, etc. to access and use these platforms. FI-Content is part of the Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP) flagship programme supported by the European Commission.

Figure 7: FI-Content Technical platform – main enablers and their functions.

The enablers provided by FI-Content were organized in the following categories:


Social connected TV: The Social Connected TV Enablers are designed to foster the development and uptake of TV applications based on Future Internet technologies: an entirely new ecosystem is evolving around connected TVs, enabling new applications and concepts around TV content.

Smart city services: These enablers provide a unique platform allowing the apps of tomorrow to be created rapidly, providing both state of the art technologies (Enablers) focused around use, and a seamless integration of OpenData solutions. The Smart City Services Enablers allow creative people to generate, share and combine assets, objects and stories to develop mobility city services and new experiences.

Pervasive games: The Pervasive games platform demonstrates a strong mix of real life and Internet experience in a playful way and shows advances in 3D or virtual world environments in a way that becomes immersive and ‘’real’’. A set of Enablers has been specifically designed to help you create cutting-edge games using FIWARE: Leaderboard, Reality Mixer – Camera Artifact Rendering, Game Synchronization, ARTool, and more.

The current list of available enablers can be found in the appropriate project web site (http://lab.mediafi.org/discover.html), where all of them are listed, explained and documented.

5.3 Architectural models In this section we formalise the interaction between the FIWARE platform components (GEs) and SPECIFI scenarios; we highlight those GEs which could facilitate the SPECIFI scenarios and we provide a high-level architectural model, for each scenario considered.

5.3.1 FI-WARE – Athens Playground

The following GEs have been identified as relevant to the Athens Playground scenario:

Augmented reality GE: An embedded browser in the application will enable to utilize the augmented reality functionalities. A pattern can be then scanned during quests adding more interest and value to the end users of the application since new scenarios can emerge. For example the scan of the pattern can show you the 3D image of what to search for next in the challenge.

Point of Interest (POI) GE: This will help store points of interest regarding the quests and challenges. It will help also query the information in a more robust way.

Cloud Rendering GE: For showing remote 3D content in the client device. This would make the user experience even more delightful.

Complex Event Processing (CEP) GE: The complex event processing GE can be used to define a sequence of events coming from quests so that a specific rule can be applied

Orion Broker GE: Events and measurements coming from the device can be published to a specific context to the Orion broker running in the cloud. Then any entity or application subscribed to this context will receive the publication.

Figure 8 illustrates the corresponding architectural model, i.e. how the selected GEs could interact with the scenario components.

http://lab.mediafi.org/discover.html


Figure 8: Creacity – FIWARE architectural model.

5.3.2 IoTogether – FIWARE

The following GEs have been identified as relevant to the IoTogether scenario:

Cloud Rendering: For showing remote 3D content in the client devices

Synchronization: Uses a WebSocket-based bidirectional protocol for connected Web clients to receive continuous real-time scene updates, and to post their real-time changes to the scene. That would help distribute remote content of the presentations.

Kurento: Development of complex interactive multimedia communications in a fast, simple and easy way

Figure 9 illustrates the corresponding architectural model, i.e. how the selected GEs could interact with the scenario components.

UC Beneficiary Tourist/Visitor

User device-smartphoneUser device-smartphone

Media Heaven platform

Action (quest)

A/V Content

Athens Creacity

Augmented reality GE

POI GE

Cloud rendering

CEP GE

Orion Broker GE

Athens Kontrijk


Cloud

Cloud rendering

Synchronization

GE

Kurento GE

City-1 City-2

Figure 9: IoTogether architectural model.

5.3.3 FI-Content – Annotated video

The following SEs have been identified as relevant to the Annotated Video scenario:

Audio Mining: This enabler could be relevant in producing automated annotation in some scenarios, where the video to be annotated contains forum discussions, meetings, voice-over, etc. This way the key words could be annotated directly over the video time line.

Social Networks: It facilitates the interfaces and services to provide communication between users and can easily build your specific Social Network that might be related over specific annotated video content. Moreover it might also be used to provide mechanisms to enable collaborative video annotation directly from the user contributions.

Flexible and Adaptive Text to Speech: It might help to provide the already existing text annotations into an audio annotation. This is a valuable feature if imagining deaf audio description modes for deaf people.

Content Enrichment: This enabler provides the technology to include interactivity in any screen or device, so it might be useful to provide interactivity for the annotated videos regardless the client device.

5.3.4 FI-Content – Distributed Environment for Music Production

The following SEs have been identified as relevant to the Distributed Environment for Music Production scenario:

Reality Mixer - Augmented Audio: This enable could help on producing immersive audio or automated audio mixing depending on the POIs located at strategic sites.

Reality Mixer – Camera Artifacts Rendering: As it has been already noted one of the interesting features to include in the AVMixer use cases in Barcelona Hub is the inclusion of


further video effects for creative and artistic events. With this tool, video effects could be widely expanded.

Content Enrichment: This enabler provides the technology to include interactivity in any screen or device, so it might be useful to provide interactivity in order to produce on screen video mixing, or on screen events that modifies the AVMixer behaviour.


6 Conclusions In the European Creative Ring, we encourage and support innovative initiatives from Creative Industries to emerge and to make use of the available platforms to create innovative experiments. In order to support such activities, WP8 provided a detailed view on the current inter-piloting scenarios as excellent examples originating from local SPECIFI pilots, recommended generic adaptation approaches to match components to the novel use case requirements, presented architectural guidelines and offers a methodology for user evaluations of inter-piloting use case implementations.

The evaluation of the inter-piloting use cases, as carried out within the respective work-packages showed that the adaptations implemented and the overall scenario realisation – specifically the platform exchange models implemented - were successful to ensure the desired quality of experience to users attracted or/and involved.

More specifically, the feedback collected at the several inter-piloting actions, which have developed based on Barcelona Hub and involved the Digital Media Platform developed by the partners of the SPECIFI project, has been instrumental in fine-tuning the deployment procedures and stakeholder requirements for a successful replication of the inter-piloting scenarios defined in D8.4. These scenarios have been proven effective in extending the impact of the Digital Media Platform in the envisioned communities of users, chiefly in the areas of culture, media and heritage. This increased impact has been achieved without a significant extension of the existing capabilities of the platforms (i.e. without the need of extensive and expensive case-by-case adaptations), thus providing more “bang for the buck” in terms of the overall benefits yielded by the SPECIFI technologies to society.

The Kortrijk Hub platforms and the app involved in the Athens Playground inter-piloting scenario have been designed and developed in a flexible way able to support user context driven adaptations, and effective local hosting and replication while maintaining the perceived quality of experience for end users. The stakeholders’ feedback on the idea and the approach has been encouraging towards providing the app in more cities, outside the SPECIFI context.

The provision of Trento Hub platform for different purpose, specifically in co-creating projects, by non-technical people was successful as the platform was adapted / extended to support increased level of user friendliness. It is therefore estimated that the platform could be successfully re-purposed in addressing additional projects in more demanding contexts.


7 References [1] SPECIFI Deliverable D8.1: Service Customisation and Adaptation Framework

[2] SPECIFI Deliverable D8.2: Abstraction Layer for Service Management

[3] SPECIFI Deliverable D8.3: Decision making for Application and Content Customisation

[4] SPECIFI Deliverable D3.4: Adaptation requirements and plans for pilots

[5] SPECIFI Deliverable D4.5: Evaluation report

[6] SCECIFI Deliverable D5.5: Evaluation report

[7] SPECIFI Deliverable D8.4

[8] The FI-WARE project, https://www.fiware.org/

[9] The FI-Content project, http://mediafi.org/

https://www.fiware.org/

http://mediafi.org/

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