Interactive Tour Guide: Enhancing Travel Experience Through Sharing Platform

1. Tour guide design and sharing platform Thesis Proposal by Chi-Chia Huang

2. How to visit? • Would you collect the information about the place you are going to visit? World Travel Guide Frommer’s Travel Guide Wikitravel

3. How to visit? • Would you buy a travel book before departure?

4. How to visit? • Would you be willing to hire a tour guide when you visit a famous spot?

5. How to visit? • Would you be willing to hire a tour guide when you visit a famous spot?

6. How to share? • Would you like to share your tour to your friend? • Would you give your friends any advise when they are visiting some place which you have been to before?

7. How to share? - Album

8. How to share? - Blog

9. How to share? - Blogmap

10. How to share? - Book

11. How to share? - Movie

12. Solution • Tour information • Light and portable • Personal experience sharing • Desire of expressing oneself • Alternately way to record one’s experience • Tour guide for a changing world • Interesting tour

13. Solution • Tour information • Light and portable • Personal experience sharing • Desire of expressing oneself • Alternately way to record one’s experience • Tour guide for a changing world • Interesting tour

14. Mobile device • Mobile devices such as cell phone become more powerful and ubiquitous. Nokia N95 as example: • 8GB internal flash memory • 2.8” color display • 5 megapixel camera, MPG-4 VGA capture • Java™ and Symbian applications available • GPS

15. IDeixis Yeh, T., Tollmar, K., and Darrell, T. 2004. IDeixis: image-based Deixis for finding location-based information. In CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vienna, Austria, April 24 - 29, 2004). CHI '04. ACM, New York, NY, 781-782.

16. Snap2Play Tat-Jun Chin, Yilun You, Jean-Pierre Chevallet, Celine Coutrix, Joo-Hwee Lim and Laurence Nigay, Snap2Play: A Mixed-Reality Game based on Scene Identification, ICME 2007

17. REXplorer • At the end of the game, the users are presented with a souvenir blog customized to show their personal experience in the city. Rafael Ballagas, Sven Kratz, Jan Borchers, Eugen Yu, Steffen P. Walz, Claudia Fuhr, Ludger Hovestadt, and Martin Tann. REXplorer: a mobile, pervasive spell-casting game for tourists. In: CHI '07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (2007)

18. Solution • Tour information • Light and portable • Personal experience sharing • Desire of expressing oneself • Alternately way to record one’s experience • Tour guide for a changing world • Interesting tour

19. RTS (real-time strategy) • “A real-time strategy (RTS) video game is one that is distinctly not turn-based. …Other gameplay mechanics implied by RTS include resource gathering, base building and technological development, as well as abstract unit control.” by Wikipedia WarCraft II StarCraft WarCraft III Dune II

20. Map editor • Map editor enables users to create new map with freedom to modify terrain, and place game units on the map. • It also supports user to define events. So user can create their own stories or missions. • Some missions make RTS look like RPG. • User created maps/missions are shared between players society.

21. 悄悄的我走了， 正如我悄悄的來； 我揮一揮衣袖， 不帶走一片雲彩。 尋夢？向青草更青處漫溯， 滿載一船星輝， 在星輝斑斕裡放歌 但我不能放歌， 悄悄是別離的笙簫； 夏虫也為我沉默， 沉默是今晚的康橋！ 軟泥上的青荇， 油油的在水底招搖； 在康河的柔波裡， 我甘心做一條水草 那榆蔭下的一潭， 不是清泉，是天上虹 揉碎在浮藻間， 沈澱著彩虹似的夢。 輕輕的我走了， 正如我輕輕的來； 我輕輕的招手， 作別西天的雲彩。 那河畔的金柳 是夕陽中的新娘 波光裡的艷影， 在我的心頭蕩漾。

22. Scenario • Hanwen graduated from NTU. He is familiar with NTU campus. The campus is filled with his memories, including happiness, and sadness. • He wants to share his experience of NTU campus with other people. • He recoded some videos and collected some music and used the system to create a trip plan. • He then post this trip plan on the system web site.

23. Scenario • Hsiaowei is a freshman of NTU. This is her first time to NTU. • She uses her mobile phone to browse the system web site. • She notices that Hanwen’s trip plan is very popular. So she download the plan and visit the campus in Hanwen’s steps.

24. Application • General usage • Tour guide • Restrict usage • One to one • Boy friend to girl friend • Personal experience record • One to many • Teacher to student

25. System Architecture

26. System Architecture • Trip plan • Routes, spots, videos, music, photos, events • Event is trigged by taking picture of the spot or GPS reading. • Tourists browse the system web site, and download the plan they are interested in. • The pictures are sent back to the system for scene recognition. • After the trip is accomplished, tourists can score the plan. They can also recommend the plan to their friend.

27. Solution • Tour information • Light and portable • Personal experience sharing • Desire of expressing oneself • Alternately way to record one’s experience • Tour guide for a changing world • Interesting tour

28. Pervasive Game • “An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.” by Wikipedia

29. Problem Definition • Guide • User interface design • Tourist • Mobile device programming • User interface design • Scene recognition system • Input • Photo, GPS • Output • yes or no • 3, 4 candidate scenes

30. Challenge • Provider • Friendly and intuitively user interface • Viewer • Programming on mobile device • System response time • Element of interest • Scene recognition system • Recognition accuracy • System response time

31. Milestone • Scene recognition system • Refinement of the interest part • Provider interface design and implement • Viewer interface design and implement • System web site • System integration • 三年畢業規劃中…