Enhancing the Conference Experience with a Multi-Device, Multimodal, Multi-User Program Guide

Large-scale public events, such as conferences are becoming increasingly interactive with tools to support Web-based and mobile access to the event program. Multimodal interoperable devices can further improve the event experience. This paper introduces a multi-device, multimodal and multi-user conference program guide (M3PG), which provides access to the conference program through shared public displays and mobile devices. The service offers additional functionality such as multimedia content, voting, and event feedback. Its interaction methods include spoken language, gestures and haptic feedback. The service has been used in two conferences where it received very positive feedback. Together with pre-commercialization studies, the results indicate that the service is useful for conferences both from the user and organizer perspectives.