Mass customization in ambient narratives

Ambient intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics that refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. This paper proposes a mass customization strategy to deliver tailor-made ambient intelligence environments on a mass basis. It introduces the idea of an “ambient narrative”, defined as an interactive narrative situated in mixed reality, and discusses how ambient intelligence emerges out of the continuous interaction people have with an ambient narrative. More specifically, it describes an ambient narrative as consisting of a set of predefined, interrelated, modular parts called ‘beats’. These beats are sequenced by an “ambient narrative engine” based on user’s feedback, context and past experiences, into a unique mixed reality story we call ambient intelligence. Furthermore, it discusses how this concept of ambient narratives may be implemented within two existing extensions of the Dexter hypertext reference model, the Amsterdam Hypermedia Model and the Adaptive Hypermedia Application Model. Conclusions: Ambient Intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics that refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. Since it is technologically not possible to mass produce Ambient Intelligence with the current state of the art in artificial intelligence and economically not feasible to manually develop tailor-made Ambient Intelligence products or services for each customer individually, we believe a different approach is needed to move Ambient Intelligence out of research laboratories into the real world. In this paper we described a mass customization strategy for Ambient Intelligence services offered over a collection of networked devices to customize Ambient Intelligence on a mass PR-TN-2004/00370 Unclassified iv  Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. 2004 basis. In this approach modular parts of Ambient Intelligence descriptions are assembled based on user feedback and interaction history into a personalized flow of personalized, interactive media presentations in which multiple devices may participate simultaneously. The Ambient Intelligence service thus allows people to create their own Ambient Intelligence within the scope of possibilities set down by the designer or writer of an ambient narrative, an interactive narrative in mixed reality that is designed to support people at home or in a particular service encounter in performing their everyday activities. We also explained that this mass customization strategy for ubiquitous hypermedia applications can be implemented in the existing Amsterdam Hypermedia Model (AHM) and Adaptive Hypermedia Application Model (AHAM). Although we believe this approach of mass customization in ambient narratives is conceptually sound, and supported by economical and social-cultural drivers, it will need to be implemented and tested in practice. To this end we are working on an example ambient narrative situated in HomeLab, the usability and feasibility lab at Philips Research. Unclassified PR-TN-2004/00370  Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. 2004 v