Interactive Television and Map-based Public Participation

Map-based public participation with the medium interactive television is a very young research area. The conclusion after an intensive search on the internet is that nobody has dealt with this research topic yet. With interactive television the viewer is able to make personal input or feedback that has an influence on what he/she sees and hears or is subjected to. This paper has the focus on the description of the medium interactive television, deals with its technical background and describes the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP). It further concentrates on the advantages and disadvantages of the usage of map-based public participatory applications with the medium interactive television. Interactive TV has the potential to become an important medium for some groups in our society, especially for the elderly and for visually impaired people. The second part of the paper deals with the ongoing project iiTV@home. iiTV@home focuses on the development of a map-based public participatory application for interactive television. Users can get informed about ongoing projects on the national and on the city level. Within the scope of the project S-Bahn Salzburg they receive the possibility to take part in a barometer of public opinion, where they are supposed to answer some questions concerning the building progress. Further we describe the user requirements analysis with the help of the Unified Modelling Language (UML), show and describe the first design of the prototype and deal with the design and the architecture of the system. At last an outlook on the user test is given.