MediascapesIntroduction

From AlmostPerfect

Contents 1 Introduction to Mediascapes 1.1 2001 - 2002 4d experience 1.2 Mobile Bristol 1.3 Architecture 1.4 Mobile Bristol Authoring Tools 1.5 Experience Trials 1.6 Riot1831! 1.7 Savannah 1.8 Scape the Hood 1.9 Experience Design 1.10 What did we learn? 1.11 2005-Present 1.12 HP Labs Mediascape Platform 1.13 New authoring capabilities 1.14 extensions 1.15 Mediascape Web Services 1.16 Availability 1.17 Walk to the Falls 1.18 Tower of London 1.19 Links 1.20 Questions

Introduction to Mediascapes

• Jo Reid - Hewlett Packard Laboratories

general overview

later a taster of a pirates game originally for a tech bear for school children 12 - 14 yrs

trading game - simple demo

ipaqs and aquapacs

• authoring tools
• publishing platrofrm
• experience design
• user trials

what is a mediascape?

• combination of physical object and digital experience
• media triggered by user context

location is the primary context here - but could be otherwase

eg heart rate could go up and that could trigger an event

2001 - 2002 4d experience

• 1st gen soundscape authoring
• walk in the wired woods

sounds associated with pictures used ultrasonics proximity sensors e.g stepping on a floor tile triggers a sounds

• Team pilot
• aggreation of movements of the people using ultrasonics flew a space ship on a monitor
• using peoples movement as a mouse

Mobile Bristol

• pervassive mobile computing
• consumer experiences
• context based services
• user value experiments
• research test bed
• emerging tech

Architecture

desktop authoring tool

produces xml

output to a page that runs on the ipaq

client app runs on any wince device

Mobile Bristol Authoring Tools

supports:

• Audio
• Adobe Flash
• HTML
• Maps

maps continue to be difficult lots of different types of data will do a mapping workshop during the lab

Map systems are different in different coutnries

SK Blast theory were here in the summer and have a collection of maps for the area.

(See Jo Walsh the geo spatial cartel

• Interactions
  • point and click
  • scripting
• Sensors
  • GPS, Indoor Positioning, IR Beacons, RF Beacons
  • Sensorbus
    • custom hardware
    • sensors for heart rate, light, sound, pressure
• http://www,sceincescope.co.uk

Experience Trials

• Educational role playing game
• Situated Audio play
• Located digital stories
• location aware heritage
• digital street games

Riot1831!

• sounds and stories of riot in bristol in 1831 brought
• 1831 bristol protest against reform act
• big riot city center destroyed
• eavesdropping on conversations from 1831
• sounds of swords and horses etc
• takes user back to 1831..

• medium only as good as the content
• they had good scripts
• dedicated space - square etc.
• included transcripts from the trials of the conspirators
• technology wasn't very precise
• very short segments recorded
• 133 segments
• 54 regions in the square
• as you entered the region it would play a sound file
• as you left it fades out
• randomised - different experience for each user
• values in 2 phenomona s
• some people like synchronisation between users
• some people like to have personal experiences
• professional actors for scripts
• background sounds
• holds inexperienced users in the piece
• audio only piece
• most people liked it and got imersed in the stories
• control wasn't so good
• some wanted images - imagining the space
• some people said they wanted to see as well
  • very split
  • slightly gendered - 'check this Jo'
  • women more likely to want sound only
  • men more likely to want images too

Savannah

• computers in classroom
• overlay savannah (lions etc.)over a playing field
• players have to hunt and survive
• get to understand what living on the savannah will be like

• took long time to organise
• lots of organisations collaborating
• BBC provided background images
• Nesta future lab did project management
• ran for a week
• educational center in bristol
• 6 groups of kids at a time
• half day each
• testing between classroom and playing field
• kids were humans in the class room
• 3 games where they could be lions in the field
• ie marking territory
• then they could see where they had been
• hunting in dry and wet seasons
• can hunt a gazelle by yourself
• need to co-operate to take down a buffalo

• mobile bristol front end
• nottingham provdied a server back end
• you would need a server for any game etc.

• we are not planning a multi user game for the lab

Scape the Hood

• kqed digital story telling festival
• a walk around san francisco
• learn about its history and culture
• 170 people
• publicised in arts community in SF
• 3 different projects and experiences
  • Project Artaud
    • bringing the buildings history into the world
  • land and history
    • history of the people
    • representatives of illoni
    • explored sounds from 1850
    • californian library of natural sounds
    • mission creek followed the left of the block
    • built over recently
    • but they are there underground
    • relationship between what is on the surface and its historical past
  • Mission Village Market
    • was about to be built over
    • now it has gone
    • could here it as if it was there or as if it wasnt there
    • juxtaposition between the present and the future
    • now reversed!
• the medium can be quite compelling

Experience Design

• what are we learning about experience design?
• can track people and their useage
• bit like tracking page impressions - place impressions

What did we learn?

• technology assets
• patent filings
• experience design expertise
• worldwide author groupl
• confirmation that users like it
• published papers too

2005-Present

• developed 3rd gen publishing platform
  • wholly HP owned
  • better engineered
  • web service integration
• strategic trials
  • usa exposure
  • commercial pilots

HP Labs Mediascape Platform

• editor
• emulator
• map aligner
• mediascape script
• client

New authoring capabilities

• New editor
  • drag and drop/scripting
• simple object model for scripting
  • properties, methods, events
• new media types
  • video, scheduler, sequence, slideshow
  • scheduler allows you to have optional layers depending on how fast you are moving
  • base layers + other layers of media
• temporal events
  • timeline, ticker
• richer logic
  • if/then switch, while for loops
• variables only available in the xml layer
• hoping you can do more stuff in the editor
• now c sharp underneath
• hooks out to the world

extensions

• Plugin architecture
• allows framework to be extended
• add sensors for different environments
• opportunity for experimentation
• sdk under development
• thinking about open sourcing it..

Mediascape Web Services

• experience creators
  • authoring tools
  • map library
  • Distribution
  • Retail
• experience providers
  • localisation
  • logging
  • CRM integration
  • device management
  • branding
• consumers
  • Discovery
  • Download
  • my mediascape
  • reccomendations
  • forums

• Mediascape web service APis

Availability

• New toolkit will be released later this year
• free for non-commercial use
• create-a-scape
  • http://www.create-a-scape.org.uk
• aim to grow community web site to allow author to share experiences
  • tracking school uses

Walk to the Falls

• Park service objective
• design
• in Yosemite Valley
• will talk about how we created this and others
• design, scripting, production

Tower of London

• fast track 3 months
• used for a case study
• http://tinyurl.com/y2ly5z
• alreay have audio tours
• not so good for kids
• at the moment they don't have control over the media
• have to rewrite everything
• everything on mediascape can be changed daily or hourly
• stream data to it
• they wanted to be able to author
• wanted to make games
• did design workshops
• prototyped some ideas in 1.5 days
• then they could produce content and plug it in to the framework

• radio receiver carried by the guards
• guards carry pingers
• if the kids get pinged they go to jail
• good for the warders
• can present far more stories
• enhance the visitor experience
• addresses different learning styles
• the pingers made it much more interactive
• the kids liked the frisson of that
• there is a pinger that sends out an id number
• the receiver picks up the id and sends it to the ipaq
• you can also use infrared sensors - more line of sight

Links

'Jo can you put them in here?'

Questions

• can you have sub regions?
• JR yes