Monuments, museums and cities are great places to feel and experience neat and interesting things. But cultural heritage is experienced differently by different visitors. The more erudite may know beforehand what they intend to explore, while the least literate usually know and are capable of expressing some of their preferences but do not exactly realize what to see and explore. This paper proposes the use of a mobile application to set an itinerary where you can move at your own pace and, at the same time, have all the complementary information you need about each of the points of interest. The application is designed in face of an adaptive user interface where the routing and augmented reality are connected to acknowledge the needs of different user categories, such as elders, kids, experts or general users

No abstract

The Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System for Museums (M5SAR) project aims to development an Augmented Reality mobile system for museums. Museums are amazing places, where it is important to sensorial augment as much as possible the visits, permitting to see, ear, touch, smell, and taste all the interesting objects there exist. Also fundamental is that visitors with different profiles (child, adult, expert, etc.) can have different experiences when visiting the same object. In the M5SAR system, the visitor uses its smartphone to select the object(s) to explore, and the user interface adapts on-the-fly to the object(s) and user's profile. Simultaneously, when integrated, a paired hardware device allows the extension of the augmented reality system to the human five senses, complementing the visual and auditory information about the objects. This chapter presents the initial framework to develop a five senses mobile adaptive museum system.

No abstract

Design as a field of study and research emerged in the 1960’s, a relatively recent area of academic study, however its multidisciplinary characteristics demonstrate that it has become a field of major importance in various types of research problems on other areas of study. We are living a pandemic scenario unveiled by Covid-19 that made governments and societies change their ways of living, working, and interacting. On a Planet in which humanity’s overconsumption and overproduction endangered the biological regeneration of the natural habitats, these changes demonstrate the possibility to transform behavioural habits and mindsets towards a more environmentally driven attitude. In this study, we researched the negative impact of plastic litter in the Oceans, a fast-growing menace that needs urgent action. Based in a comprehensive literature review, we were able to better understand the span of the problem and decided to center our approach on fast moving consumer goods, having narrowed the aim of our research to one of the most common plastic packaging items found in marine litter that results from a negative behavioural habit: plastic grocery bags. Subsequently we have selected a set of food retail companies in Portugal as case studies, to access if they use new and innovative design solutions, in which careful material flow decisions, environmental concerns, acceptable consumption habits and aesthetics have been taken in consideration. Findings reveal sustainability concerns when analyzing the commitment and action plans adopted by these companies on the improvement of their environmental impacts, with the reduction in the use of raw materials or the eco-design of their self-brand products, in which Design is a strategic element. Future work intends to follow up those actions to identify if they led the user/consumer to adopt a more sustainable and sentient behaviour.