Augmented Space: Bringing the Physical Dimension into Play

In an 'ideal guided visit' to a space (as an exibition, a museum, an archaeological site, a city, an so on) what a visitor would like to have is a flexible companion that helps him in visiting the museum or town as an information space. Of course museums or exhibitions (or towns) are phisically organized in some rigid way. When organizing the physical layout of the exposition areas a specific criterion for items positioning has to be chosen, according to a 'default' perspective of information presentation, either chosen by an architect or imposed by geographical constraints. It may happen that the default physical organization does not meet directly the visitor's expectations, possibly making it difficult to build a personal route. In the case of a museum, paper maps, provided at the entrance, may help visitors navigate through the different rooms to find those items that meet their owm interests. Written and tape recorded guides can provide useful description of the objects displayed but they do not guarantee flexibility, either because of technological constraints (i.e. audio tapes force a predefined path) or because the descriptions are not coherently related to each other. On the other hand, virtual musems may offer a more flexible object display determined by the visitor's individual preferences and history of interaction (as happens for example in the ILEX system [Knott et al., 1996] New hardware technology allows the fruition of virtual repositories of information while enjoying the physical space: for example, kiosks or portable devices may allow the access to a portion of the virtual space relevant for the object in front of the visitor. Adaptive and dynamic hypertext technology may be exploited to tailor the presentation to the visitor interests, the actual context of the visit and so on