PACT analysis and prototype design for an interactive systemSCENARIO 1: Historic buildings are very often rebuilt, added to and redecorated over the centuries. Tourists are often fascinated, however, by how the building “might have looked” in the past which is why “artists impressions” and models are often used in historical displays. However, these displays are not really interactive, we canʼt actually “experience” how the building really looked. Or can we?

PACT analysis! 2

People! 2

Activities! 3

Context of use! 4

Current Technology! 5

Future Technology! 6

Observations supporting the PACT analysis ! 8

Secondary research! 9

Low Fidelity Visualisation! 10

Feedback on the Design Visualisation! 11

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Sam Holmes! 2688321

Designing for Usability! 1

PACT analysisPeople

Currently if people visit places of historical significance in Coventry, such as the Coventry Cathedral, they are faced with a very un-interactive experience. The only time they have two way interaction is when they talk to the tour guide. This of course is limited for tourists

whoʼs first language isnʼt English. There will also be a lot of school trips to the area due to its historical significance to Coventry. This means that a lot of students both young and mature will visit the Cathedral whilst learning about the Second World War. Again this raises the issue of language as not all students first language is English this limits there interpretation of the plaques that are currently the main source of information at the site. Another issue that is faced with young students is simply finding the students, in such a big place they can easily get lost. As its the responsibility of the teacher/tour rep to keep track of them it would be a lot easier if there was a way to keep track of where they are.

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Activities

One of the main activities that takes place when I observed on my visits was guided tours. This is a fairly typical occurrence at tourist attractions, it simply shows people the highlights of a place with information given verbally whilst they look at various features of that place. Now although this is a great way to get an overview of a place this unfortunately limits people to a very linear perspective of the places. This is something I feel could be greatly improved as I know personally one of the most fun things about actually discovering new places is finding things for yourself, so the way this could be improved with my app is by giving the users a rough guideline of the layout of the Cathedral that they can follow or fall back on if they get lost but mainly I would want them to discover places for themselves. Another feature this could then incorporate is a geocaching, perhaps in the form of virtual post-its people can leave with there own comments. Also the information that the tour guide provides can be a voice over in app with possible cues that lead to information on the internet thus allowing users access to a lot more information they can take in from a tour guide but only at there request. In addition this information could be bookmarked or exported to various reading apps (such as iBooks) for later observation. Another key activity is photography, this is what will capture the trip for the people who visit. Now photography comes in many forms with todays technology ranging from Mobile Phones to SLR Cameras. This means that I would need to support high end photography as well as amateur, because photographers will not be happy with the same level pictures as people using camera phones but at the same time I need to keep the interface simplistic enough for anyone to pick up and use.Finally people purchase items from the gift shop, this is a fairly simple task but could still be improved upon. To do this I would use a similar technology to Google Goggles(http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text) where you take a picture of an object and it searches online for that product. Obviously for my software it would only need to search the gift shop and reserve the item they choose, possibly by relating items in the shop to pictures they take of various artifacts.

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Designing for Usability! 3

Context of useAs the Cathedral is an outdoor setting itʼs subject to the weather, but this does have some advantages as it allows for noise to disperse, meaning that it stays fairly quiet throughout the day. The site itself is also very large so that it doesnʼt get over crowded.Due to the fact that a lot of the visitors are passer by visitors this means that my system will be need to be very quick and simple so that people can pick it up an immediately know how the software works and use it to their advantage.

As my plan is to use an app that can be downloaded to a users smart phone the ecological impact would be very minimal. However I will need to consider what will happen if the user receives a call/text/push notification, for now I would just pause the software and carry on after the message has been closed. The only issue I have is that to provide the users who donʼt have smart phones with adequate replacements there will need to be a secure anti theft system that still allows for full mobility with the device, this is so that the user can get the exact same experience as the people using their phones.

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Designing for Usability! 4

Current Technology

At the moment the technology that faces the people who visit the Cathedral is simple signs and plaques.

Now while these provide information, the format its presented in greatly reduces both the amount of information and languages, as a plaque cant be limitless. These are issues that shouldnʼt even come up on the radar any more due to so many technologies that can handle this situation better.

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Future Technology

The first problem Iʼll discuss a solution for is the language barrier. With todays technology this is really no longer an issue, because of software like Word Lens (http://questvisual.com/). Word Lens is an iPhone app which can translate text using the camera and provide a overlay of the translated text in the original texts place in realtime. Now this would have obvious implications for areas with high tourism, if my software was to natively support this it means that I could convey any information in realtime as well as in any language. This feature would need the device to have a camera. However I think the best way to integrate the software is to create an app that could be downloaded to a users phone or tablet device (iPad, Samsung Galaxy tab etc) when the entered the Cathedral. This would mean that even people that just happen to visit the Cathedral, without previous plans could still benefit from the new experience. Of course an alternative would have to be offered to those who didnʼt have compatible devices, possibly staff members at the entrances providing a device for the users visit.The next piece of technology I would strive to incorporate would be the use of Augmented Reality. This is because augmented reality could be used to show the user in realtime the changes that have occurred, so that as the user moved around the Cathedral their screen would be showing the Cathedral as it used to be. It would then be very simple to integrate information into the UI that could be called up at the userʼs request so possibly small bubbles around an object that as you tap them they revel the history of that object and some information about it.This would also allow for small mini games to be incorporated to keep the experience more engaging for school trips, such as small geocaching events that could be used to create a treasure hunt game, ideas for learning games in this scenario are mentioned in far more depth in Re-experiencing History in Archaeological Parks by Playing a Mobile Augmented Reality Game1. For this to work however there would need to be accurate tracking of where the person is within the Cathedral. We can already see great examples of GPS tracking with apps such as Star Walk (http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html) which uses the users current location to give them an accurate view of what star constellations are currently in view for that user. This would be a great feature for the app as it would allow for the user to see history before them. However there are limitations to GPS this is because it requires a strong signal to accurately track the user but there are ways we could improve this. If we were to strategically place microchips that the app could recognise this could give it an accurate

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1 OTM'07 Proceedings of the 2007 OTM confederated international conference on On the move to meaningful internet systems - Volume Part I (357-366) published 2007

location of user. These could be planted in the plaques in front of the objects or even in the spotlights in the floor. Finally I would like to talk about how technology can improve the social activities. One of the main activities that takes place when people visit the Cathedral is taking photos. Now the way I think this could be improved with technology is an idea by Microsoft(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/

street_slide/), that takes the premiss of Google Street View and but built with user submitted pictures, if I were to incorporate that into my designs this means the users could

effectively ʻMake Historyʼ with there own pictures. So that as more and more people visit, they can leave there pictures to be stitched together for the people that follow them to see and then add their own pictures, this could then be expanded into a time line so that the users could see the changes that have happened within their own lifetime.

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Observations supporting the PACT analysisOne of the things that shocked me when I observed the various tour groups and general people that visited the Cathedral was the lack of discussion about the things they were seeing. I believe this was due to the fact they were in a quite linear tour, so one of the things I quickly looked at adding into my work was a way for the app to create small social links such as the post-its which allow for people to express how they feel about what theyʼve seen or are seeing and also relate that to what others have thought. All in all I made 5 visits at 20minutes each to the cathedral and observed the people in hindsight I regret not taking more pictures during these visits as I used one visit solely for this. This may have hindered the scope of my pictures and notes but Iʼm still happy that I gathered enough details to help with this report.From my first visit I began to come up with ideas for my App and from studying the people visiting I was able to remove quite a few ideas I would have previously thought perfect for this situation such as, native chat between people in the Cathedral(in the app).

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Secondary researchhttp://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text accessed on the internet on 28/1/2011 12:23http://questvisual.com/ - accessed on the internet on 28/1/2011 14:30OTM'07 Proceedings of the 2007 OTM confederated international conference on On the move to meaningful internet systems - Volume Part I(357-366) published 2007.

http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html - accessed on the internet on 28/1/2011 14:35http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/street_slide/ accessed on the internet on 28/1/2011 14:55.

These websites themselves didnʼt help with my work all that much but the concepts their technology allowed me to incorporate into my design, were a truly remarkable milestone to see where technology has come. The fact we can instantly translate text or browse the internet using images is amazing in my opinion and I look forward to where these technologies can take the ʻUser Interfaceʼ in the future. As I believe I merely scratched the surface of this technologies potential with some of my ideas in my designs. Google Goggles is a great example of imaging technology as it allows the user to browse the internet with images as keywords.Whilst Google offer street view I didnʼt want to use this in my design as I preferred the idea of the photos being submitted by the user, because of this I chose to use Microsofts alternative. However obviously the historical images will not be user submitted these images will be in app similar to ʻStreet Viewʼ.

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Designing for Usability! 9

Low Fidelity VisualisationSam Holmes! 2688321

Designing for Usability! 10

Feedback on the Design VisualisationA couple of things cropped up when I let people have a look at my UI firstly being that the user interface can be very cramped so to solve this I was thinking about implementing a shake to show information feature or something similar. Another issue is that the size of the screen will cause text to be displayed in a small font to to counteract this I could add a font size selector or a magnifying overlay for text.

Sam Holmes! 2688321

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