Personalized Interactive Video-Based Crosmedia Informal Learning Environments from iTV, PC and Mobile Devices – The Design Challenges

Abstract

Television always had an important role in everyday life. However, due to several circumstances, as the proliferation of new devices with improved technological characteristics, better interfaces and better communication features, the TV viewing/use paradigm evolved to a new level. Television is now often used as part of crossmedia systems, thus creating flexible solutions so helpful when learning environments and different contexts of use are the main goal. This paper briefly addresses the design challenges that need to be considered in the design of crossmedia systems able to generate personalized video-based interactive informal learning environments from iTV, PC and mobile devices. The system that was designed to illustrate our research, and which evolved from previous versions, is called eiTV (meaning interactive TV content extended and complemented with web contents) and generates a crossmedia personalized informal video-based learning environment, through the form of a web-based content, which provides extra information about users’ selected topics of interest while watching a specific video. The web content may be generated, accessed and personalized through iTV, PC and mobile devices and, depending on the users’ needs, viewed immediately or stored for latter view, individually or simultaneously, also from iTV, PC and mobile devices.

An evaluation, with the participation of 90 elements, from 18 to 65 years old, grouped into 3 different age groups, was carried out with high fidelity prototypes and the achieved results were very optimistic considering that they helped rethink our crossmedia related assumptions and showed that the exploration of new functionalities and solutions was a success amongst the different age groups.