Sam Holmes!

2688321

PACT analysis and prototype

design for an interactive system
SCENARIO 1: Historic buildings are very often rebuilt, added to and redecorated over the centuries. Tourists
are often fascinated, however, by how the building “might have looked” in the past which is why “artists
impressions” and models are often used in historical displays. However, these displays are not really
interactive, we canʼt actually “experience” how the building really looked. Or can we?

PACT analysis! 2
People! 2

Activities! 3

Context of use! 4

Current Technology! 5

Future Technology! 6

Observations supporting the PACT analysis ! 8

Secondary research! 9

Low Fidelity Visualisation! 10

Feedback on the Design Visualisation! 11

Designing for Usability! 1

Sam Holmes! 2688321

PACT analysis
People

Currently if people visit places of historical significance in Coventry, such as the Coventry
Cathedral, they are faced with a very un-interactive experience. The only time they have
two way interaction is when they talk to the tour guide. This of course is limited for tourists

whoʼs first language isnʼt English.

There will also be a lot of school trips to the area due to its historical significance to
Coventry. This means that a lot of students both young and mature will visit the Cathedral
whilst learning about the Second World War. Again this raises the issue of language as not
all students first language is English this limits there interpretation of the plaques that are
currently the main source of information at the site.
Another issue that is faced with young students is simply finding the students, in such a big
place they can easily get lost. As its the responsibility of the teacher/tour rep to keep track
of them it would be a lot easier if there was a way to keep track of where they are.

Designing for Usability! 2

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Activities

One of the main activities that takes place when I observed on my visits was guided tours.
This is a fairly typical occurrence at tourist attractions, it simply shows people the
highlights of a place with information given verbally whilst they look at various features of
that place. Now although this
is a great way to get an
overview of a place this
unfortunately limits people to
a very linear perspective of
the places. This is something
I feel could be greatly
improved as I know
personally one of the most
fun things about actually
discovering new places is
finding things for yourself, so
the way this could be
improved with my app is by
giving the users a rough
guideline of the layout of the
Cathedral that they can follow
or fall back on if they get lost
but mainly I would want them
to discover places for themselves. Another feature this could then incorporate is a
geocaching, perhaps in the form of virtual post-its people can leave with there own
comments. Also the information that the tour guide provides can be a voice over in app
with possible cues that lead to information on the internet thus allowing users access to a
lot more information they can take in from a tour guide but only at there request. In
addition this information could be bookmarked or exported to various reading apps (such
as iBooks) for later observation.
Another key activity is photography, this is what will capture the trip for the people who
visit. Now photography comes in many forms with todays technology ranging from Mobile
Phones to SLR Cameras. This means that I would need to support high end photography
as well as amateur, because photographers will not be happy with the same level pictures
as people using camera phones but at the same time I need to keep the interface
simplistic enough for anyone to pick up and use.
Finally people purchase items from the gift shop, this is a fairly simple task but could still
be improved upon. To do this I would use a similar technology to Google Goggles(http://
www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text) where you take a picture of an object and it
searches online for that product. Obviously for my software it would only need to search
the gift shop and reserve the item they choose, possibly by relating items in the shop to
pictures they take of various artifacts.

Designing for Usability! 3

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Context of use
As the Cathedral is an outdoor setting itʼs subject to the weather, but this does have some
advantages as it allows for noise to disperse, meaning that it stays fairly quiet throughout
the day. The site itself is also very large so that it doesnʼt get over crowded.
Due to the fact that a lot of the visitors are passer by visitors this means that my system
will be need to be very quick and simple so that people can pick it up an immediately know
how the software works and use it to their advantage.

As my plan is to use an app that can be downloaded to a users smart phone the ecological
impact would be very minimal. However I will need to consider what will happen if the user
receives a call/text/push notification, for now I would just pause the software and carry on
after the message has been closed. The only issue I have is that to provide the users who
donʼt have smart phones with adequate replacements there will need to be a secure anti
theft system that still allows for full mobility with the device, this is so that the user can get
the exact same experience as the people using their phones.

Designing for Usability! 4

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Current Technology

At the moment the technology that faces the people who visit the Cathedral is simple signs
and plaques.

Now while these provide information, the format its presented in greatly reduces both the
amount of information and languages, as a plaque cant be limitless. These are issues that
shouldnʼt even come up on the radar any more due to so many technologies that can
handle this situation better.

Designing for Usability! 5

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Future Technology

The first problem Iʼll discuss a solution for is the language barrier. With todays technology
this is really no longer an issue, because of software like Word Lens (http://
questvisual.com/). Word Lens is an iPhone app which can translate text using the camera
and provide a overlay of the translated text in the original texts place in realtime. Now this
would have obvious implications for areas with high tourism, if my software was to natively
support this it means that I could convey any information in realtime as well as in any
language. This feature would need the device to have a camera. However I think the best
way to integrate the software is to create an app that could be downloaded to a users
phone or tablet device (iPad, Samsung Galaxy tab etc) when the entered the Cathedral.
This would mean that even people that just happen to visit the Cathedral, without previous
plans could still benefit from the new experience. Of course an alternative would have to
be offered to those who didnʼt have compatible devices, possibly staff members at the
entrances providing a device for the users visit.
The next piece of technology I would strive to incorporate would be the use of Augmented
Reality. This is because augmented reality could be
used to show the user in realtime the changes that
have occurred, so that as the user moved around the
Cathedral their screen would be showing the
Cathedral as it used to be.
It would then be very simple to integrate information
into the UI that could be called up at the userʼs
request so possibly small bubbles around an object
that as you tap them they revel the history of that
object and some information about it.
This would also allow for small mini games to be
incorporated to keep the experience more engaging
for school trips, such as small geocaching events that
could be used to create a treasure hunt game, ideas
for learning games in this scenario are mentioned in
far more depth in Re-experiencing History in
Archaeological Parks by
Playing a Mobile Augmented Reality Game1. For this
to work however there would need to be accurate
tracking of where the person is within the Cathedral.
We can already see great examples of GPS tracking with apps such as Star Walk (http://
vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html) which uses the users current location to give them an
accurate view of what star constellations are currently in view for that user. This would be
a great feature for the app as it would allow for the user to see history before them.
However there are limitations to GPS this is because it requires a strong signal to
accurately track the user but there are ways we could improve this. If we were to
strategically place microchips that the app could recognise this could give it an accurate

1OTM'07 Proceedings of the 2007 OTM confederated international conference on On the move to
meaningful internet systems - Volume Part I (357-366) published 2007
Designing for Usability! 6
Sam Holmes! 2688321

location of user. These could be planted in the plaques in front of the objects or even in the
spotlights in the floor.
Finally I would like to talk about how technology can
improve the social activities. One of the main activities
that takes place when people visit the Cathedral is
taking photos. Now the way I think this could be
improved with technology is an idea by Microsoft
(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/
street_slide/), that takes the premiss of Google Street View and but built with user
submitted pictures, if I were to incorporate that into my designs this means the users could
effectively ʻMake Historyʼ with there own
pictures. So that as more and more people visit,
they can leave there pictures to be stitched
together for the people that follow them to see
and then add their own pictures, this could then
be expanded into a time line so that the users
could see the changes that have happened
within their own lifetime.

Designing for Usability! 7

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Observations supporting the PACT analysis

One of the things that shocked me when I observed the various tour groups and general
people that visited the Cathedral was the lack of discussion about the things they were
seeing. I believe this was due to the fact they were in a quite linear tour, so one of the
things I quickly looked at adding into my work was a way for the app to create small social
links such as the post-its which allow for people to express how they feel about what
theyʼve seen or are seeing and also relate that to what others have thought.
All in all I made 5 visits at 20minutes each to the cathedral and observed the people in
hindsight I regret not taking more pictures during these visits as I used one visit solely for
this. This may have hindered the scope of my pictures and notes but Iʼm still happy that I
gathered enough details to help with this report.
From my first visit I began to come up with ideas for my App and from studying the people
visiting I was able to remove quite a few ideas I would have previously thought perfect for
this situation such as, native chat between people in the Cathedral(in the app).

Designing for Usability! 8

Sam Holmes! 2688321

http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html - accessed
Secondary research on the internet on 28/1/2011 14:35
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/
accessed on the internet on 28/1/2011 12:23 kopf/street_slide/ accessed on the internet on
http://questvisual.com/ - accessed on the internet 28/1/2011 14:55.
on 28/1/2011 14:30
OTM'07 Proceedings of the 2007 OTM
confederated international conference on On the
move to meaningful internet systems - Volume Part
I(357-366) published 2007.

These websites themselves didnʼt help with my work all that much but the concepts their
technology allowed me to incorporate into my design, were a truly remarkable milestone to
see where technology has come. The fact we can instantly translate text or browse the
internet using images is amazing in my opinion and I look forward to where these
technologies can take the ʻUser Interfaceʼ in the future. As I believe I merely scratched the
surface of this technologies potential with some of my ideas in my designs. Google
Goggles is a great example of imaging technology as it allows the user to browse the
internet with images as keywords.
Whilst Google offer street view I didnʼt want to use this in my design as I preferred the idea
of the photos being submitted by the user, because of this I chose to use Microsofts
alternative. However obviously the historical images will not be user submitted these
images will be in app similar to ʻStreet Viewʼ.

Designing for Usability! 9

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Low Fidelity Visualisation

Designing for Usability! 10

Sam Holmes! 2688321

Feedback on the Design Visualisation

A couple of things cropped up when I let people have a look at my UI firstly being that the
user interface can be very cramped so to solve this I was thinking about implementing a
shake to show information feature or something similar.
Another issue is that the size of the screen will cause text to be displayed in a small font to
to counteract this I could add a font size selector or a magnifying overlay for text.

Designing for Usability! 11