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Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Artes Aplicadas do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco e Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Design Gráfico

Uma das principais questões no desenvolvimento de infra-estruturas de ecrãs públicos interactivos está relacionada com o escalonamento da informação que deve ser apresentada. O escalonamento deve considerar, não apenas a informação, mas também os espectadores potenciais com o contexto do ambiente. A definição, representação e gestão do contexto assume um papel importante e tem influência no escalonamento. Neste artigo é observado o modelo de contexto baseado em ontologia que serve de base ao escalonamento da informação. O modelo proposto permite analisar e inferir em situações de contexto complexas, context reasoning e permite o tratamento de situações relacionadas com a indisponibilidade, ambiguidade e imprecisão da informação.

Dynamic sources, which make regularly updated data available for use by other applications, are increasingly a key enabling feature of the web. They are extensively used in all sorts of social media applications where they are re-combined in multiple ways to generate new aggregate services. Public situated displays are an emergent area where dynamic sources can also play a key role in providing situated and frequently updated content. However, the specificities of public displays raise the need for automated selection of the most relevant sources to present. This study addresses relevance from the perspective of timeliness. We propose a timeliness model that supports the most common types of dynamic source. To validate that model, we set an experiment with a public display exhibiting content from dynamic sources and receiving from users feedback on its timeliness. The results from this experiment suggest a reasonable match between our model and the users’ perspectives on timeliness. The results also show that the model is able to make comparative calculations of timeliness for different types of dynamic source. These results enable us to conclude that timeliness functions may help to significantly increase the relevance of content automatically selected from dynamic sources.

“Copyright © [2009] IEEE. Reprinted from 5th International Conference on Signal-Image Technology & Internet-Based Systems. ISBN:978-1-4244-5740-3. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.”

Public situated displays can represent an important mechanism to enhance users’ experiences and reflect the information and the interactions associated with their environment and the people on it. However, this type of embodiment requires the display system to be able to perform unassisted scheduling based on the current state of the environment in which it is integrated. In this paper, we explore this problem domain and the various ways in which it can be approached. This analysis is organised around three main parts of this problem: which dynamic information to consider, how to introduce domain knowledge for enabling rational choices and how to model the scheduling process itself. We also describe our own approach to these issues, a context-sensitive MAUT scheduler that selects the next item to be presented by determining the one with the highest utility considering the current context of the display.

“Copyright © [2010] IEEE. Reprinted from 4th International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems. ISBN:978-1-4244-5917-9. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.”

A public display that is able to present the right information at the right time is a very compelling concept. However, realising or even approaching this ability to autonomously select appropriate content based on some interpretation of the surrounding social context represents a major challenge. This article provides an overview of the key challenges involved and an exploration of some of the main alternatives available. It also describes a novel place-based content adaptation system that autonomously selects from web sources the content deemed more relevant according to a dynamic place model. This model is based on a tag cloud that combines content suggestions expressed by multiple place visitors with those expressed by the place owner. Evaluation results have shown that a place tag cloud can provide a valuable approach to this issue and that people recognize and understand the sensitivity of the system to their demands.

Tag clouds have become very popular as visual representations of the main topics in document sets or as navigation tools that can provide quick access to resources related with specific topics. However, their ability to represent the information environment associated with any meaningful reality in a way that is collectively visible, actionable and easily understood may also be very relevant, even when the reality being represented is no longer a set of documents or resources, but a stream of interactions occurring within a particular ubiquitous computing environment. In this paper, we explore the use of tag clouds within the context of situated displays and services. We hypothesise that such tag clouds may have a role as dynamic representations of place and also as interaction controls, supporting the same comprehension and navigation functions of classical tag clouds. We describe two case studies in which this concept of situated tag cloud has been experimented in real-world settings. The case studies demonstrate two different applications of the tag cloud concept as the basis for place description and situated interaction. The results obtained from the case studies suggest that situated tag clouds can indeed provide valuable representations of place and situations and can also support simple interaction models, allowing people to reason about the system behaviour and how it is being influenced by new interactions.

ABSTRACT: This paper reflects part of a broader investigation on the development of methodologies to identify, value and manage design capabilities in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage. With the automotive industry and smaller supplier Portuguese companies as background, this paper explores the resource-based view theory (RBV) and the dynamic capabilities theory as a theoretical construct for a further development of research tools. In the automotive industry, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) continue to control the overall design of the vehicle, as part of the ability to manage the offer portfolio and brand communication. However, the industry have been moving towards an increasing participation of smaller suppliers in product development processes, pushed towards capabilities’ development as a requirement to continue competitive in the OEM’s suppliers network. The role of design and design management capabilities have been explored as strategic resources or core competencies. However, Design is not typically found in smaller supplier firms as resource (as opposed to Design studios in larger companies) but found as a process in resourcecapability combinations, establishing the need for a new research approach. Therefore, the RBV is a tool to value the design process as a sustained competitive advantage. The RBV conceptualizes a framework to determine or identify the strategic resources available or needed within a company. At these lenses, the basis for a sustainable competitive advantage lies in the application of the bundle of valuable resources identified and at the firm's disposal and the combinations with its capabilities