When working in distributed teams, it is very important to be aware of the activities of all members, since it provides hints about when they might be available for collaboration. We propose a novel visualization technique that combines several representations to show the daily patterns of team members' activities. It uses a 24 hours circular display to facilitate international collaboration across time zones. Current calendar information can be compared to the typical patterns and reveal likely availability. User studies evaluating the tool that implements the proposed technique are reported and discussed.

Large interactive displays are increasingly used in public spaces. Yet, it is still a challenge to understand how people behave when faced with such displays in their real life, not only when they are used for entertainment (or advertising), but also when they mediate more purposeful tasks. Do people feel shy? Are they willing to interact? Are they satisfied with the services offered and will they come back to use them again? To answer such questions, these systems have to be evaluated in the field so as to understand their actual impact on users in the real life. This paper first introduces an initial evaluation framework, aimed at highlighting some of the variables involved in understanding the impact of large display installations. Then, it applies the framework to analyze users' behavior and their experience with a large display installed at an international conference. Results highlighted that people showed greater interest in those services that, despite a lower appeal, supported them in carrying out useful tasks.

Distance education has experienced profound changes due to the introduction of new technologies, especially mobile devices of different types. It is necessary to define new learning techniques which are able to capture students' attention and to engage them in their learning activities, reducing problems like distraction generated by the use of the device itself and/or by the surrounding environment. Game-based learning is a valuable possibility. The excursion-game has been recently proposed to support pupils learning history during visits to historical sites; its goal is to make the visit and the overall experience of cultural heritage more engaging. This paper describes the approach followed in the design of the system implementing the excursion-game; it takes into account an end-user development perspective in order to allow domain experts, i.e., experts in history and cultural heritage, contributing to design excursion-games for a wide set of historical sites.

This paper analyzes how User-Centred Design (UCD) has been carried out in the creation of a web-based system, whose aim is monitoring air quality for sustainable industrial development. This distributed multimedia system has been commissioned by the Puglia region and it is used primarily by industries and regional government experts. Several lessons are learned from this analysis and hints about the effective application of UCD and the fruitful involvement of users for creating usable systems are derived.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study whose main aim is to verify if the Pattern-Based (PB) inspection technique enables end users to perform reliable evaluation of e-learning systems in real work-related settings. The study involved 13 Polish and Italian participants, who did not have an HCI background, but used e-learning platforms for didactic and/or administrative purposes. Results of the study revealed that the participants were able to effectively and efficiently apply the PB inspection technique with minimum ef-fort. However, in some cases, participants complained that the technique has complicated the task of assessing the platform and made evaluator's work even more stressing. This study revealed some valuable suggestions to redesign the evaluation tools of the PB technique, in order to improve the focus on specific elements of the e-learning system and to streamline better the evaluation process.

This paper illustrates our approach to enhance the visit experience of archeological parks. It exploits composition technologies, End-User Development and participa-tory design approaches, in order to allow different stakeholders to create, use and share Personal Information Spaces. Heterogeneous content can be combined and manipulated to satisfy different information needs, thus enabling personalized vis-its to Cultural Heritage sites.

ICT technologies have a great potential not only for preserving and increasing awareness about cultural heritage, but also for allowing people to better experience this huge legacy. Various application tools have already been developed which provide different types of multimedia resources, such as 3D representations of objects and places, videos, graphics, sounds, in order to augment the physical context by providing virtual, location-specific information, so that people can experience some aspects of ancient life which would otherwise be very difficult to figure out. The effort spent to create multimedia resources is considerable; therefore, it is worth reusing them to produce applications suited to other types of visitors. In this paper, we present our on-going work to provide tailored applications that support different types of visitors. Such applications are developed according to a model that describes how multimedia resources can be combined, also depending on the type of users and devices. Examples of these solutions are briefly illustrated

The huge amount of heterogeneous content available nowadays on the Web pushes towards approaches and tools to allow people, even non-technical ones, to retrieve, combine and manipulate such content, in order to satisfy their knowledge needs. In this paper we illustrate how composition technologies enable teacher and students to create, use and share interactive workspaces that can enhance their learning experience about history and cultural heritage

Pervasive games have been proposed as a suitable way to support learning, especially in places rich in information, as for example museums and cultural heritage sites. This paper reports on the work performed to identify guidelines that help designers in developing games able to provide an effective learning experience in such contexts. Such guidelines complement other proposals available in the literature. The presented contribution is a first step of a wider work aimed at deepening our understanding of pervasive educational games, with a special emphasis on games in the cultural heritage domain, in order to inform the designers of such challenging applications.

Distance education has experienced profound changes due to the introduction of new technologies, especially mobile devices of different types. It is necessary to define new learning techniques which are able to capture students' attention and to engage them in their learning activities, reducing problems like distraction generated by the use of the device itself and/or by the surrounding environment. Game-based learning is a valuable possibility. The excursion-game has been recently proposed to support pupils learning history during visits to historical sites; its goal is to make the visit and the overall experience of cultural heritage more engaging. This paper describes the approach followed in the design of the system implementing the excursion-game; it takes into account an end-user development perspective in order to allow domain experts, i.e., experts in history and cultural heritage, contributing to design excursion-games for a wide set of historical sites.

Understanding how technology, coupled with skillful pedagogical solutions, can help to innovate and improve learning at school is the main goal of the “Learning for All” (L4A) research project. The combination of educational games and advanced technology has the potentiality of arousing pupils’ attention, also engaging them in learning activities while having fun. This paper presents two educational games available through a large multitouch displays installed in the hall of a primary school. Such games aim at stimulating pupils to exercise their knowledge about history and geography. Field studies have been planned to study both educational and social aspects about the interaction with such games.

In this paper we propose a novel conceptual framework for the design and continuous evolution of ambient intelligence environments. This framework is structured along three layers - physical, inference and user layer - sharing an information space of events, conditions and actions. In particular, an end-user development approach is advocated for the user layer to support rule design and development. At this stage of the research agenda, we are investigating which could be the most suitable interaction style for rule design: indeed, it should be compatible with the underlying distributed inference layer and easy to use by a community of end users (e.g. a family). To this aim, this paper presents a user study that explores end-user development tasks for a smart home and compares two well-known systems in supporting end users in these activities. The results of the study have provided some indications for the further implementation of our framework.

Explore! is designed to be used in a wider set of historical sites. The game content historical information, 3-D reconstructions and sounds is provided by XML files and can be authored in numerous ways and adapted to different sites. A great advantage of Explore!, which makes it very attractive for use in archaeological parks across Italy with very limited funds, is that the game infrastructure requires almost no investment by the park. The system can also show high-resolution 3-D models of other areas that might not be accessible in the park. Explore! has been field tested with 124 middle-school students, who expressed excitement about the opportunity to use technology during their visit and commented on how nice it was to use a cell phone for the game and see the 3-D reconstructions. They provide added value in terms of stimulating learners' engagement, increasing their motivation, and arousing their curiosity, while permitting immersion in the learning environment. The system runs on commercial cell phones, and the software is all contained in the phone's memory card.

The importance of cultural heritage in forging a sense of identity is becoming increasingly evident. Information and communication technologies have a great potential to promote a greater awareness and appreciation of cultural heritage. This paper presents some findings on how mobile technology can be used to foster a better understanding of an archaeological site by reconstructing the ancient environment and life. Children aged 11-13 years old are the target of our research. To motivate and engage them, a pervasive educational game has been developed and implemented in Explore!, a system aimed at supporting children exploring sites of cultural interest. Special attention has been devoted to the design of a soundscape that may improve players’ navigation in degraded physical environments and enrich their overall experience. A field study indicated that children judged their experience both useful and entertaining: not only did they enjoy playing the game but they also learned historical notions and facts related to ancient Roman life. Contextual sounds were found to have a facilitating effect on space navigation, reducing the need for map reading and improving spatial orientation. This work provides insights into the design of educational games for use with cultural heritage and a model to enrich historical sites through the creation of soundscapes which can help visitors to navigate a site and feel its historical atmosphere.

The use of gameplay has been shown to be an excellent educational tool, especially if such games are supported by innovative and engaging technologies. This paper presents two new games implemented on a large multitouch screen, designed to support young students learning about historical sites like archaeological parks during school visits. Students are encouraged to collaborate to solve the proposed challenges, but they can also play against each other, since direct competition is known to be another way to stimulate and reinforce learning. We believe that such games can make visits to historical sites more effective and exciting

Integration of human-centered design in a company’s software development requires a thorough analysis of its current practices by both researchers and practitioners.

The efforts of addressing user experience (UX) in product development keep growing, as demonstrated by the proliferation of workshops and conferences bringing together academics and practitioners, who aim at creating interactive software able to satisfy their users. This special issue focuses on "Interplay between User Experience Evaluation and Software Development", stating that the gap between human-computer interaction and software engineering with regard to usability has somewhat been narrowed. Unfortunately, our experience shows that software development organizations perform few usability engineering activities or none at all. Several authors acknowledge that, in order to understand the reasons of the limited impact of usability engineering and UX methods, and to try to modify this situation, it is fundamental to thoroughly analyze current software development practices, involving practitioners and possibly working from inside the companies. This article contributes to this research line by reporting an experimental study conducted with software companies. The study has confirmed that still too many companies either neglect usability and UX, or do not properly consider them. Interesting problems emerged. This article gives suggestions on how they may be properly addressed, since their solution is the starting point for reducing the gap between research and practice of usability and UX. It also provides further evidence on the value of the research method, called Cooperative Method Development, based on the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in carrying out empirical research; it has been used in a step of the performed study and has revealed to be instrumental for showing practitioners why to improve their development processes and how to do so.

Cultural heritage assets keep alive the history of a territory and of its inhabitants. Several systems have been developed to support people during their visits to historical sites and museums, with the goal of improving the overall user experience. In many cases, people travelling together would appreciate the possibility of collaborating in gathering information and planning a personalized itinerary. Large sharable multitouch screens may offer this possibility. This paper is about ongoing research that is investigating possible applications of large multitouch screens in cultural heritage and tourism. In particular, an application is described, which aims at allowing tourists to get information about a territory and create itineraries for their visits by interacting together on a large screen

Previous research on Planning Support Systems (PSS) showed that low usability of these computer-based tools is one of the reasons why they are not widely used by planning professionals. Few studies for evaluating PSS usability are performed, possibly because developers do not regard it as their task, do not have enough skills to conduct them, and have not been stimulated so far to appreciate their value. In this chapter, a framework is described that aims at guiding usability evaluation of PSS; it is developed on the basis of a more general usability evaluation framework. The current version of the framework has been applied to evaluate three PSS by performing a test with a small group of land use planners. Results of this user test are discussed, also providing some recommendations for the design of PSS, specifically those addressing Land Suitability Analysis (LSA), capable to generate a positive user experience.

The importance of usability engineering in software development is acknowledged by an increasing number of software organizations. This paper reports from a survey of the practical impact of usability engineering in software development organizations. The survey was conducted in Southern Italy, replicating one conducted in Northern Denmark three years earlier. The results show that the number of organizations conducting some form of usability activities is nearly the same, but there are important differences in the understanding of usability. The key advantages emphasized by the respondents are product quality, user satisfaction and competitiveness in both surveys. The main problems emphasized are developer mindset, resource demands and customer participation.

The advent on the market of multi-touch devices has prompted studies that investigate the use of such devices in learning domain, demonstrating that games are an effective way of exploiting these new technologies that allow pupils to achieve informal learning and foster collaboration during their educational activities. We defined an educational format that combines traditional learning performed at school with educational multimedia games implemented on a multi-touch screen, set up vertically. A field study showed the effectiveness of this educational format, supporting the use of applications on the multi-touch display to help pupils consolidating the acquired knowledge. This paper reports a complementary study that analyses pupils’ reactions to the use of a traditional desktop as compared with the use of the multi-touch screen. Results provided further evidence that pupils enjoy interacting with the multi-touch screen, because it allows them to collaborate and to use their hands, directly moving objects about on the screen.

There is a huge and ever increasing amount of data sources available on the Web, which provide content through programmatic interfaces. Unfortunately, such data sources are accessible only through programming and therefore it is difficult for non-technical users to take advantage of such enormous data assets. The need therefore arises for paradigms to let laypeople, i.e., users without expertise in programming, explore and compose data sources. This paper discusses mechanisms for data source exploration and integration, which emerged from a study where laypeople were involved in discussions to gather their requirements about accessing and composing services. The paper also describes the prototypes that we defined to respond to the requirements highlighted by end users