Objective
Public users of 'ordinary' everyday computer and telecommunication services are overwhelmed in two significant ways:
- the selection of the most appropriate service, given their particular needs at a point in time and
- having selected a service, the difficulty of operation (use) of that service.
KIMSAC addresses these problems by asserting the need for some form of mediation between users and services. This mediation is conceptualised by KIMSAC in terms of Personal Service Assistant (PSA). A PSA operates on behalf of a user in an analogous manner to a human personal secretary.
KIMSAC involves the trial of multimedia kiosks (advanced public phone boxes) in three different locations in Ireland during 1997 and 1998. The kiosks provide access to networked multimedia applications that enable users to query social-welfare entitlements or transactions and also enable unemployed users to match their multimedia CVs to job vacancies. Every client will be assisted by an 'intelligent agent', a software program that searches, sorts, and filters information, based on the clients current needs. KIMSAC proposes the Personal Service Assistant (PSA) as a new form of mediation between users and services. A PSA operates as an agent and acts on behalf of the user in an attempt to address the user's needs. The PSA enables new modes of interaction between users and services. The project is also specifying new kinds of multimedia interfaces supporting the concept of a PSA. Components identified in the specifications are being prototyped and validated in the context of real end-user trials. In addition the platform required for supporting distributed multimedia services is being prototyped.
The KIMSAC application contexts are those of social welfare services and job facilitation.
The KIMSAC trials will lead the way towards a) shorter times-scales for employment consideration and b) shorter time-scales for welfare entitlement identification and registration.
Through project WWW pages and press-releases surrounding the trails, greater awareness of the usability issues and technologies addressed by KIMSAC will be generated.
Contributions to guidelines for usability of IBC applications will be made, in particular input relating to the incorporation of intelligent assistance. In addition, results assessing the usability benefits gained by various technologies and intelligent agents will be attained. Finally, usability contributions regarding the incorporation of interactive IBC services in public service kiosk can be derived.
Expected Impact
KIMSAC will develop and adapt a related notion to that of a PSA, namely that of a personal 'software' assistant.
KIMSAC will employ concepts and technologies to enable simpler and more intuitive means for users to access and use multimedia based services. Making services easier to use has many obvious benefits such as, increased uptake of new services, increased use of advanced features and increased frequency of use, all of which lead to increased satisfaction (and/or productivity) within the end-user community. Furthermore, user-friendly interfaces have the "knock-on" benefit of reducing costs associated with user education and service support.
Main contributions to the programme objectives:
Main deliverables
Guidelines for the development of distributed systems, the integration of multimedia and multi-agent systems and the implementation of a personal service assistant. Kiosk based trials addressed social welfare services and job facilitation.
Contribution to the programme
Contributions were provided to enterprise and brokerage models and to the first agent standards of FIPA.
Technical Approach
In order to bring the vision of a PSA a step closer, KIMSAC seeks to integrate interface and multimedia technology from the IT industry with distributed platform technology from the telecommunications community.
Newly emerging intelligent agent technology provides a vehicle for this integration.
Agents act on behalf of a user in an attempt to address the user's needs. In the context of a telecommunications system, they enable new modes of interaction between users and services, e.g. agents can behave both proactively and reactively.
KIMSAC takes a dual approach to usability by:
- introducing new modes of interaction between users and services and
- providing appropriate interfaces to enable users to take advantage of these new facilities.
This project has an overall technical objective; to specify new kinds of multimedia interfaces supporting intelligent agent-user interactions i.e. providing an open service environment.
Summary of Trial
KIMSAC's first trial is being operated in three separate geographic locations in Ireland during 1997; Dublin, Galway (West of Ireland) and Letterkenny (North West of Ireland) have been selected as the three locations. Screen shots from KIMSAC's first trail are shown below.
Since KIMSAC is largely a human factors project, a trial with end users is all-important to validate the interface and application system design. The trial is being conducted in two parts. Whereas part 1 (1997) provides information on user behaviour and difficulties in usability, part 2 (1998) of the trial is concerned with the assessment and testing of the 'intelligent' personal service assistant itself. Part 2 of the trial will evaluate the robustness of the underlying technological supports in a live (kiosk-based) environment. The practicality from a service provider's perspective of providing information to the citizen and capturing data with intelligent assistance will be assessed. In addition, usability issues of supporting (interactive) IBC services such as video-conferencing are being assessed in the context of assisting the users to attain their objective.
Key Issues
- The realisation and presentation of the Personal Service Assistant (PSA) metaphor such that usability is significantly increased. To be able to let ones personal assistant look for suitable jobs is very valuable; it can quickly inspect large numbers of offerings to find those that fit the user.
- When the user swipes the personal identity card, his/her personal agent is activated, and stored client data is fetched. The user may choose to remain anonymous, and in this case the system will use the data as entered by the client in the session.
- The mechanisms that enable the perception that there is an intelligent entity acting on behalf of the user. Intelligent agents use knowledge about the client to retrieve and process information in a client-specific way. The agents are goal-driven, which relieves the client from having to control the way the session proceeds.
- The structure, navigation and exchange of service knowledge and information. Domain-specific rules reside in components clearly separated from the rest of the system, which simplifies maintenance.
- The possible exploitation of emerging multimedia technology to enable PSA capabilities.
- The adaptation and integration of agent and Internet technologies to support the operation of a PSA.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence
- social sciences sociology governance public services
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
- social sciences economics and business business and management employment
- social sciences psychology ergonomics
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Coordinator
2 Dublin
Ireland
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