relevant performer’s posture and movements
(especially: total body, feet, leg, hand and fingers,
vocal tract, gaze, face, etc.), capturing sounds
(through recordings, etc.), capturing contextual
conditions (i.e., accessories and tools of any kind
used by the performer), capturing any interactions
with others, capturing single roles, single styles, and
detect synchronization aspects (among performers,
among different ‘actions’ by the same performer,
etc.).
To do this, the system will need to include a
variety of sensors, including: optical sensors, depth
sensors, inertial sensors, electroglottographs sensors
(EGG), electroencephalograms sensors (EEG),
ultrasound sensors and other sensors (such as for
example piezoelectric accelerometer, universal
breathing belt, etc.
3
). Given that the system will use
all these sensors, it is an issue that these sensors
shall not disrupt or influence the performance.
Besides, the system shall be able to operate
directly on the output of the aforementioned sensors;
in particular, since the system will perform
multimodal data capture and analysis, it will need to
perform early data fusion covering the following
areas: facial expressions, body and gestures, EEG
signals, vocal tract and sound.
The system shall also be able to detect basic
features/sequences/patterns of a performance,
categorize improvisation patterns, as well as detect
deviations from standard performance, so that the
3D visualization for sensorimotor learning module is
able to support users to learn, practice and master
one specific ICH.
Another important category of functionalities of
the i-Treasures system has to do with its ability to
guarantee access to data and information concerning
the ICHs. This means that the system will allow the
storage of multi-media information (video, audio,
images, text, etc.) and provide adequate and multi-
searching functionalities to allow easy retrieval of
this information. The system shall guarantee multi-
lingual data.
Another affordance of the system has to do with
providing support to teaching and learning
processes. This means that the system will offer the
teacher the possibility to design innovative learning
activities for a specific sub-use case, while the
student will be able to carry them out and will be
assessed. In particular, the system will allow to set
up and deliver standard learning paths, as well as
personalized ones, and the learning path will
3
The latter category of sensors has been identified in D2.2: First
Report on System Specification.
possibly adapt dynamically based on the student’
performance in previous activities. The system will
support individual activities, as well as group work,
offering also communication tools; besides activities
may include: readings, exercises (quizzes, etc.),
imitation, listening/looking at performances
(focusing on roles/styles/sequences/patterns, etc.),
3D visualization of models/sounds/movements, etc.,
practicing and receiving immediate feedback, etc.
The requirements for the i-Treasures platform,
which have been synthesized above, represent one of
the main output of the complex process the project
underwent in the past few months. The overall
requirement definition process and the participatory
approach adopted turned out to be very fruitful, as
they allowed the definition of a set of requirements
which can be considered ‘common’ to all the use-
cases, while others are specific for the single sub-use
cases. At the same time, the participatory approach
required a great effort in terms of coordination and
management: in particular, the effort to negotiate a
common vocabulary among people coming from
very different fields and with different competences
and needs, as well as the idea of building a common
framework for describing all the ICHs, although
necessary, were particularly challenging. At the
same time, adopting other, less participative
approaches to define the users’ requirements, would
have been a non-sense in the unexplored field of
ICH, where capturing the experts’ know-how is an
essential step of the process.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we have presented the complex work
that has led to the preliminary definition of the user’
requirements for the i-Treasures system. The process
has been highly collaborative and inter-disciplinary,
with a strong effort devoted to involve all the main
stakeholders, including not only the various partners
with their variety of competences, but also the
communities around the single ICHs considered by
the project. The effort has given very good results, in
terms of sub-use case analysis and knowledge
domain definition, which have then nurtured the
process of requirements’ definition.
One of the main outcome of such process has
been the development of a deep understanding of the
sub-use cases, especially if we consider that for most
of the sub-use cases, this represents the first real
attempt to derive a knowledge representation model.
The deriving list of requirements is certainly
another important result of such effort, but this is
AParticipatoryApproachtoDefineUserRequirementsofaPlatformforIntangibleCulturalHeritageEducation
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