The Kurio project was led by Professors Marek Hatala & Ron Wakkary and involved several other graduate students in addition to myself. We developed a tangible museum guide with the research goals of exploring issues of social engagement, play and learning for family groups in museums. The interactive museum guide is comprised of a tangible user interface that is distributed over several different custom tangible components, a tabletop display, and a PDA that the family group uses to explore the museum by playing an interactive game. Through designing the system we have developed an adaptive user model for groups that facilitates different learning styles and levels, guided by constructivist learning principles. My work on the project centered around the development of the adaptive user models and the reasoning engine which governed the interactions.

More information can be found in the Kurio Project Video and at the Kurio Project Website

Project Publications:

Marek Hatala, Karen Tanenbaum, Ron Wakkary, Kevin Muise, Bardia Mohabbati, Greg Corness, Jim Budd, Tom Loughin, (2009) “Experience Structuring Factors Affecting Learning in Family Visits to Museums.” In: Cress, U., Dimitrova, V., Specht, M. (Eds.): “Learning in the Synergy of Multiple Disciplines”, Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (ECTEL09), LNCS 5794, Springer-Verlag, Sept/Oct 2009, pp.37-51. Download PDF

Ron Wakkary, Marek Hatala, Kevin Muise, Karen Tanenbaum, Bardia Mohabbati, Jim Budd, (2009) Kurio: A Museum Guide For Families, in Proceedings of Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, (Cambridge, UK, 2009) ACM Press. Download PDF

Ron Wakkary, Kevin Muise, Karen Tanenbaum, Marek Hatala, Leora Kornfeld, (2008) Situating Approaches to Interactive Museum Guides, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 23:4, 367-383. Download PDF

Kevin Muise, Karen Tanenbaum, Ron Wakkary, Marek Hatala, (2008) A Report on Participatory Workshops for the Design of Adaptive Collaborative Learning, in AH2008 Workshop on Adaptive Collaboration Support in Adaptive Hypermedia 2008, Bonn, Germany. Download PDF

Ron Wakkary, Kevin Muise, Karen Tanenbaum, Marek Hatala, Leora Kornfeld (2007). Situating Approaches to Museum Guides for Families and Groups, in International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM07): Proceedings, J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. 2007, 22 pages. Online Paper