Situated Micro-displays for Activity-Aware Systems

Abstract

Abstract. Most activity-aware systems designed to support mobile workers in dynamic environments, such as hospitals or industrial plants, typically consider the use of mobile devices and large displays. However, we envision potential benefits of using ubiquitous micro-displays as support of mobile workers activities. Particularly, in this paper we show how the use of situated micro-displays, as a mechanism for embedding information into a physical environment, can contribute to improve the performance and experience of mobile workers in those scenarios. The article also describes the prototype of a micro-display network designed to support people performing spatially distributed activities. It also presents a user study that helps understand how the spatial distribution of situated micro-displays impacts on the mobile workers performance.Keywords. Situated micro-display, activity-centric system, mobile work. IntroductionAdvances in wireless communication, sensor networks and ubiquitous computing have made possible the interaction between people and numerous devices that are interconnected and physically distributed in the environment [1]. These advances have promoted the evolution of single-monitor setups towards multi-display environments [2], where it is possible to have displays embedded in a physical ambient and also in everyday objects. Several studies on workplaces have shown how instrumented environments and everyday artefacts support people cognition and collaboration [3,4]. Researchers have emphasized the need to deliver task-centric information in dynamic workplaces, such as hospitals or industrial plants, as a way to support the activities performed by mobile workers [5,6]. Typically, situated information systems [7] provide information of the physical environment to mobile workers, and activity-aware systems [8] infer the workers' activity context in order to offer them suitable supporting services. Most of these systems types rely on the use of mobile devices and large displays [9]. However, recent researches [10] advocate for the use of micro-displays to provide situated information in activity-aware systems and offer activity-specific guidance. These micro-displays are mobile and adaptive. They are distributed across the environment and provide simple visual representations of human activities that are linked to physical entities -such as objects and people-and integrated in the environment.

Monitoring for Awareness and Reflection in Ubiquitous Learning Environments

“…Also, we aim to complement, in future iterations of the research, the results presented in this paper, with other types of data gathering techniques, such as think-aloud protocols, brainstorming or workshops, for further exploring the necessities of teachers for monitoring ubiquitous learning environments. Finally, further research would be necessary to explore the scalability of the approach so that it could eventually be used in massive educational environments, as well as the possible integration in the monitoring system of other context-aware external applications and devices, or other types of monitoring interfaces to visualize the information, such as ambient displays (Hernández-Leo et al, 2012;Medina et al, 2014). PhD ICT.…”

“…Another approach is represented by the systems proposed by Tabuenca et al (2014) or de la Guía et al (2016), which by means of NFC tags placed in physical objects, enable the tracking of actions performed, respectively, in informal or formal learning activities but, again, without integrating such data with other coming from other formal or blended learning activities and spaces. Similarly, some researchers have specifically focused on the orchestration of smart classrooms, proposing monitoring systems for such environments (Martinez-Maldonado, Kay, Yacef, Edbauer, & Dimitriadis, 2013;Martinez-Maldonado et al, 2016;Medina, Kawsar, Meseguer, & Ochoa, 2014;Slotta, Tissenbaum, & Lui, 2013). In addition, there are several proposals for different types of dashboards in tablets and mobile devices, capturing and visualizing traces of classroom or blended learning activities (Verbert et al, 2014), but without providing support to monitor learning situations involving multiple physical and virtual spaces.…”