The environment as a medium: beyond location-aware interfaces for cultural visits

A museum visit is a personal experience encompassing both cognitive aspects (e.g. the elaboration of background and new knowledge), as well as specifically emotional aspects (e.g. satisfaction of interests, fascination for the exhibits). The aim of a museum guide is to integrate the real visit, without competing with the original exhibit items for the visitor’s attention. The environment can be considered as a medium, although apparently a static one. Actually, an automated personal guide can get round the static nature of this medium by dynamically changing the visitor's perception of the environment or by (directly or indirectly) suggesting to the visitor movements in space. In our own work we have given a pre-eminent role to coherent language-based presentations in a physical space. In the paper the main concepts and some future challenges are discussed