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Kyoto base for the Tokugawa Shoguns during the Edo period in Japan. (see
Figure 1).
(2) Story database: We have created a database of stories that are related to
the sites on the tour. These stories have been crafted according to above criteria:
anecdotes are selected that relate closely to the particular sites, and that reveal
interesting and easily-retold information about Japan's history and culture.
Each story includes both dialogue and gestures that the Microsoft Agent
character will perform. The gestures add emotional as well as informational
value to the stories (Isbister & Ishida 1999). The agent's spoken delivery of
the dialog allows visitors to devote more of their visual attention to the site
that they are exploring. The stories are HTML files containing JavaScript com-
mands that drive the MS Agent. The database currently includes three versions
of each story - short, medium, and long - to be delivered by the guide de-
pending upon the level of user interest and activity during the tour. The story
database is implemented using PostgreSQL ver. 6.4.2, running on a Sun with
the Solaris operating system. Currently, the database is a simple table that al-
lows lookup and selection of stories based on length, title, and the tour stop to
which they relate. In the future, we plan to categorize these stories by content
type as well, to allow for adaptive story telling based on tour-takers' specific
topic interests. We would also like to develop a way to rank the stories based on
user feedback as to which are the most enjoyable and interesting, to help keep
the tour fresh and reflective of the latest visitor interests.
(3) Chat server: The tour is hosted using a commercial chat server called
I-chat. I-chat makes it easy to associate particular Web pages with chat rooms,
and to push new pages to all chat room participants (see Figure 2). Tour takers
log into our local I-chat server and are in the same chat room for the duration
of the tour. I-chat's implementation also makes it easy to create an agent that
can log into the chat environment in the same way that a user does. The perl
agent that drives our guided tour is logged into the tour chat room, and can
easily monitor and log user activity, in order to make the story selections that
it will push as HTML pages to all users' Web browsers.
(4) Tour agent: The tour agent, written in perl, makes decisions about what
story to tell at each tour stop. This agent is logged into the chat room, and is
able to monitor the group's conversation. The current implementation tracks
the quantity of conversation, and looks for positive and negative keywords that
indicate how visitors feel at the moment (negative words include words such
as “boring, dull, too long”; positive words include words such as “wow, cool,
neat, interesting”). The current prototype agent selects stories using a very sim-
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