Issued from a collaboration between Disney's artistical teams and several research entities from France Telecom R&D, included the Studio créatif, the attraction "Small World Small Talk" was inaugurated on April the 2nd 2004, in the France Telecom post show of the attraction "It's a Small World" of the Disneyland park.

On 18 december 2001, Disney and France Telecom concluded a partnership agreement which gives the sponsorship rights to France Telecom for the attraction "It's a Small World".

So the work began between those teams in order to give a brand new image to the France Telecom post show.
Its renovation and improvement had to take first into account the major evolutions of France Telecom and telecommunication's sector since its creation 10 years ago ; second the future developments of this sector not to be deprecated soon.
The goal : the way used to exhibit to millions of visitors of the Park France Telecom and telecommunication applications.
Hard challenge for a so dynamic and evolutive sector !

The first step consisted on updating deprecated references shown to people, to repaint the post show in accordance with the France Telecom charter and with the people demands. From the beginning, it has been decided to show to the visitors a brand innovating image.

The Studio créatif and Disney Imagineering teams then worked together to define what kind of small new attraction could be setup, evocating the future of the world of telecommunication.

After an analysis of the innovations under development in France Telecom R&D laboratories and their implementations into scenarios of attractions developped by Disney Imagineering teams, "Small World Small Talk" was choosen by the team.

This animation allows every kind of visitors of the park, to dialogue within an interactive kiosk by interposed avatars. It introduces in a transparent, simple and ludic way a situation of advanced communications.

But a Chat with 3D animated and speaking Disney's characters using your own voice, here is the innovation of the attraction !

The innovation stays in the integration inside the attraction of :

• Live facial and body animations which make the dialogue real and characterize each character ;
  
  
• The use of a system of voice recognition which extracts, in real time, the phonemes from the voice signal (visitors voice) to animate the face and particularly to move the lips ;
  
  
• A multimodal interface into four languages (english, french, german, spanish) with an help given to the users thanks to voices which explain the game, and with animated characters which would bring you up into their "own world"...

The application is installed on two PCs, connected within the kiosk through touch screens, which allow both users to interact in real time by interposed avatars.

The application will be installed into the Park until 2006.
The aims for France Telecom R&D is both :

• To test these new technologies into a real context of utilisation, particularly avatar's technology for its first use into a mass environment ;
  
  
• To test, in a real way, new uses allowing to anticipate on new services based on these technologies by France Telecom.