Tourceira : design de um sistema produto-serviço de turismo acessível para a Ilha Terceira

Esta dissertação consiste no desenho de um sistema produto/serviço colaborativo – criado para a Ilha Terceira –, e dos elementos gráficos necessários, na área do turismo acessível. O “Tourceira” destina-se a todos os turistas, com ou sem limitações, que visitam a ilha, e que pretendem realizar actividades turísticas durante a sua estadia. Este serviço destina-se também a todos os habitantes que pretendem fazer parte do projecto, e ser um anfitrião acolhendo os visitantes. Vem combater a escassa oferta de actividades acessíveis e o distanciamento entre o turista, que viaja em excursões, e o residente. Este serviço ambiciona proporcionar novas experiências aos turistas, explorando a Ilha e os cinco sentidos do visitante, e estabelecer relações de maior proximidade entre o turista, a comunidade e a ilha.

Context-aware framework for collaborative applications

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration not only individual user’s interest, but also social relationships. In this way, pervasive communities can lead the user to participate beyond traditional pervasive spaces, enabling the cooperation among groups and taking into account not only individual interests, but also the collective and social context. Social applications in CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) field represent new challenges and possibilities in terms of use of social context information for adaptability in pervasive environments. In particular, the research describes the approach in the design and development of a context.aware framework for collaborative applications (CAFCA), utilizing user’s context social information for proactive adaptations in pervasive environments. In order to validate the proposed framework an evaluation was conducted with a group of users based on enterprise scenario. The analysis enabled to verify the impact of the framework in terms of functionality and efficiency in real-world conditions. The main contribution of this thesis was to provide a context-aware framework to support collaborative applications in pervasive environments. The research focused on providing an innovative socio-technical approach to exploit collaboration in pervasive communities. Finally, the main results reside in social matching capabilities for session formation, communication and coordinations of groupware for collaborative activities.