Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion, 2019
Recent studies demonstrate how personalized and multisensory learning improves students&a... more Recent studies demonstrate how personalized and multisensory learning improves students' performances and teachers' work. Each student has different skills, aptitudes and difficulties, and the learning process requires more or less time in relation to both the topic to assimilate and the employed teaching method. Our system, called Magika, is a multi-modal and multi-sensory environment that empowers teachers and aims at providing students with the right learning supports. Magika includes a preliminary phase called "on-boarding", aimed at defining their likes and dislikes, and an intelligent engine, "Geniel", capable of discerning and suggesting the most suitable activities to be played, according to the player's profile.
This paper describes the result of an Usability Test over teachers’ control interface in Magika, ... more This paper describes the result of an Usability Test over teachers’ control interface in Magika, the powering engine of the Magic Room, a low-cost MultiSensory Environment (MSE) that enables new forms of playful learning for children, especially those with special needs. Magika offers a set of activities integrated in a synesthetic way; it incorporates digital worlds projected on the wall and on the floor with a large number of connected objects, such as toys and materials, that allow children to experience tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory stimuli. The MSE has been installed in two elementary schools, therefore it is an essential requirement that the system can be controlled completely autonomously by caregivers. A preliminary research, based on teacher’s needs, enlightened some basic requirements and allowed us to design a System Control Interface that enabled them to manage the experience within the MSE. The goals of testing the interface usability include: define a baseli...
Several studies explore the use of social robots in interventions for persons with cognitive disa... more Several studies explore the use of social robots in interventions for persons with cognitive disability. This paper describes ELE, a plush social robot with an elephant appearance that has been designed as a conversational companion for persons with Neuro-Developmental Disorders (NDD). ELE speaks through the live voice of a remote caregiver, enriching the communication through body movements. It is integrated with a tool for automatic gathering and analysis of interaction data that support therapists in monitoring the users during the experience with the robotic companion. The paper describes the design and technology of ELE and presents an empirical study that involved eleven persons with NDD using the robot at a local therapeutic center. We compared user engagement in two story-telling experiences, one with ELE and one with a face-to-face human speaker. According to our results, the participants were more engaged with ELE than with the human storyteller, which indicates, although ...
“Social stories” are used in educational interventions for subjects with Neurodevelopmental Disor... more “Social stories” are used in educational interventions for subjects with Neurodevelopmental Disorder (NDD) to help them gain an accurate understanding of social situations, develop autonomy and learn appropriate behavior. Traditionally, a Social Story is a short narrative that uses paper sheets, animations, or videos to describe a social situation of every day life (e.g., “going to school”, “visiting a museum”, “shopping at the supermarket”). In our research, we exploit Wearable Immersive Virtual Reality (WIVR) technology to create a novel form of social story called Wearable Immersive Social Story (WISS). The paper describes the design process, performed in collaboration with NDD experts, leading to the definition of WISS. We also describe an authoring tool that enables therapists to develop WISSes and to personalize them for the specific needs of each person with NDD.
We explore the relationship between brand design as intended in communication and marketing, and ... more We explore the relationship between brand design as intended in communication and marketing, and valuecentered design as defined in HCI, arguing that brand design is intrinsically a “value-centered” process.
The ROBOCARE Domestic Environment (RDE) is the result of a three-year project aimed at developing... more The ROBOCARE Domestic Environment (RDE) is the result of a three-year project aimed at developing cognitive support technology for elderly people. Specifically, the domestic environment is equipped with sensors, intelligent software components and devices which cooperate to provide cognitive support to the assisted person. The ROBOCARE interaction capabilities have been concentrated in a robotic mediator who acts as the main communication channel between the users and the intelligent domestic environment. This paper presents an evaluation of elderly people's perception of assistive robots and smart domotic environments. Results show how the acceptability of robotic devices in home setting does not depend only on the practical benefits they can provide, but also on complex relationships between the cognitive, affective and emotional components of people's images of robot. Specially, we analyzes a number of evaluation criteria related to the robot's aspect, the way in whic...
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion, 2019
This paper describes the procedure to create an emotional data-set, named WIYE (What Is Your Emot... more This paper describes the procedure to create an emotional data-set, named WIYE (What Is Your Emotion?), composed by semantic contents, audio and video recordings of children. Data have been collected using an interactive storytelling application, leading children aged 4 years to 12 years to discover about their emotional sphere and emotion expression skills. During the story, every episode is dedicated and focused on a specific emotion. The investigated emotional states are sadness, anger, fear, surprise and joy. This corpus can be exploited by Conversational Technologies: it can be used with Machine Learning classification algorithms to train models to recognize emotions expressed by children starting from the pitch of their voice, their facial expression and the contents of their conversations.
Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2017
"Social stories" are short narratives that describe everyday life situations using pape... more "Social stories" are short narratives that describe everyday life situations using paper or video and are widely used in interventions for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD), particularly in the Autistic Spectrum. Our research explores how to transform "traditional" social stories into wearable interactive immersive digital experiences. The paper describes a tool designed with therapists that enables everyone to autonomously develop and customize these "high tech" social stories, and, during a session of use, to control user's interaction and to automatically gather relevant behavioural information.
We present in this manuscript a report on KidRec 2017 workshop, the first edition of the internat... more We present in this manuscript a report on KidRec 2017 workshop, the first edition of the international workshop on Children & Recommender Systems, co-located with the 11th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys) held in Como, Italy. While research focused on recommender systems is prolific and addresses issues pertaining to multiple domains-from music, restaurant, and movie recommendations to scholarly publications or news-little has been done to explore the constraints and limitations that existing strategies must face when applied to non-traditional stakeholders, such as children. The first edition of our workshop was aimed at providing a venue dedicated to building community in this area and identify future research paths to nurture and grow this emerging community.
Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 2016
Our research aims at helping children with intellectual disability (ID) to "learn through pl... more Our research aims at helping children with intellectual disability (ID) to "learn through play" by interacting with digitally enriched physical toys. Inspired by the practice of Dolphin Therapy (a special form of Pet Therapy) and, specifically, by the activities that ID children perform at Dolphinariums, we have developed a "smart" stuffed dolphin called SAM that engages children in a variety of play tasks. SAM emits different stimuli (sound, vibration, and light) with its body in response to children's manipulation. Its behavior is integrated with lights and multimedia animations or video displayed in the ambient and can be customized by therapists to address the specific needs of each child.
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion, 2019
Recent studies demonstrate how personalized and multisensory learning improves students&a... more Recent studies demonstrate how personalized and multisensory learning improves students' performances and teachers' work. Each student has different skills, aptitudes and difficulties, and the learning process requires more or less time in relation to both the topic to assimilate and the employed teaching method. Our system, called Magika, is a multi-modal and multi-sensory environment that empowers teachers and aims at providing students with the right learning supports. Magika includes a preliminary phase called "on-boarding", aimed at defining their likes and dislikes, and an intelligent engine, "Geniel", capable of discerning and suggesting the most suitable activities to be played, according to the player's profile.
This paper describes the result of an Usability Test over teachers’ control interface in Magika, ... more This paper describes the result of an Usability Test over teachers’ control interface in Magika, the powering engine of the Magic Room, a low-cost MultiSensory Environment (MSE) that enables new forms of playful learning for children, especially those with special needs. Magika offers a set of activities integrated in a synesthetic way; it incorporates digital worlds projected on the wall and on the floor with a large number of connected objects, such as toys and materials, that allow children to experience tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory stimuli. The MSE has been installed in two elementary schools, therefore it is an essential requirement that the system can be controlled completely autonomously by caregivers. A preliminary research, based on teacher’s needs, enlightened some basic requirements and allowed us to design a System Control Interface that enabled them to manage the experience within the MSE. The goals of testing the interface usability include: define a baseli...
Several studies explore the use of social robots in interventions for persons with cognitive disa... more Several studies explore the use of social robots in interventions for persons with cognitive disability. This paper describes ELE, a plush social robot with an elephant appearance that has been designed as a conversational companion for persons with Neuro-Developmental Disorders (NDD). ELE speaks through the live voice of a remote caregiver, enriching the communication through body movements. It is integrated with a tool for automatic gathering and analysis of interaction data that support therapists in monitoring the users during the experience with the robotic companion. The paper describes the design and technology of ELE and presents an empirical study that involved eleven persons with NDD using the robot at a local therapeutic center. We compared user engagement in two story-telling experiences, one with ELE and one with a face-to-face human speaker. According to our results, the participants were more engaged with ELE than with the human storyteller, which indicates, although ...
“Social stories” are used in educational interventions for subjects with Neurodevelopmental Disor... more “Social stories” are used in educational interventions for subjects with Neurodevelopmental Disorder (NDD) to help them gain an accurate understanding of social situations, develop autonomy and learn appropriate behavior. Traditionally, a Social Story is a short narrative that uses paper sheets, animations, or videos to describe a social situation of every day life (e.g., “going to school”, “visiting a museum”, “shopping at the supermarket”). In our research, we exploit Wearable Immersive Virtual Reality (WIVR) technology to create a novel form of social story called Wearable Immersive Social Story (WISS). The paper describes the design process, performed in collaboration with NDD experts, leading to the definition of WISS. We also describe an authoring tool that enables therapists to develop WISSes and to personalize them for the specific needs of each person with NDD.
We explore the relationship between brand design as intended in communication and marketing, and ... more We explore the relationship between brand design as intended in communication and marketing, and valuecentered design as defined in HCI, arguing that brand design is intrinsically a “value-centered” process.
The ROBOCARE Domestic Environment (RDE) is the result of a three-year project aimed at developing... more The ROBOCARE Domestic Environment (RDE) is the result of a three-year project aimed at developing cognitive support technology for elderly people. Specifically, the domestic environment is equipped with sensors, intelligent software components and devices which cooperate to provide cognitive support to the assisted person. The ROBOCARE interaction capabilities have been concentrated in a robotic mediator who acts as the main communication channel between the users and the intelligent domestic environment. This paper presents an evaluation of elderly people's perception of assistive robots and smart domotic environments. Results show how the acceptability of robotic devices in home setting does not depend only on the practical benefits they can provide, but also on complex relationships between the cognitive, affective and emotional components of people's images of robot. Specially, we analyzes a number of evaluation criteria related to the robot's aspect, the way in whic...
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion, 2019
This paper describes the procedure to create an emotional data-set, named WIYE (What Is Your Emot... more This paper describes the procedure to create an emotional data-set, named WIYE (What Is Your Emotion?), composed by semantic contents, audio and video recordings of children. Data have been collected using an interactive storytelling application, leading children aged 4 years to 12 years to discover about their emotional sphere and emotion expression skills. During the story, every episode is dedicated and focused on a specific emotion. The investigated emotional states are sadness, anger, fear, surprise and joy. This corpus can be exploited by Conversational Technologies: it can be used with Machine Learning classification algorithms to train models to recognize emotions expressed by children starting from the pitch of their voice, their facial expression and the contents of their conversations.
Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2017
"Social stories" are short narratives that describe everyday life situations using pape... more "Social stories" are short narratives that describe everyday life situations using paper or video and are widely used in interventions for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD), particularly in the Autistic Spectrum. Our research explores how to transform "traditional" social stories into wearable interactive immersive digital experiences. The paper describes a tool designed with therapists that enables everyone to autonomously develop and customize these "high tech" social stories, and, during a session of use, to control user's interaction and to automatically gather relevant behavioural information.
We present in this manuscript a report on KidRec 2017 workshop, the first edition of the internat... more We present in this manuscript a report on KidRec 2017 workshop, the first edition of the international workshop on Children & Recommender Systems, co-located with the 11th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys) held in Como, Italy. While research focused on recommender systems is prolific and addresses issues pertaining to multiple domains-from music, restaurant, and movie recommendations to scholarly publications or news-little has been done to explore the constraints and limitations that existing strategies must face when applied to non-traditional stakeholders, such as children. The first edition of our workshop was aimed at providing a venue dedicated to building community in this area and identify future research paths to nurture and grow this emerging community.
Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 2016
Our research aims at helping children with intellectual disability (ID) to "learn through pl... more Our research aims at helping children with intellectual disability (ID) to "learn through play" by interacting with digitally enriched physical toys. Inspired by the practice of Dolphin Therapy (a special form of Pet Therapy) and, specifically, by the activities that ID children perform at Dolphinariums, we have developed a "smart" stuffed dolphin called SAM that engages children in a variety of play tasks. SAM emits different stimuli (sound, vibration, and light) with its body in response to children's manipulation. Its behavior is integrated with lights and multimedia animations or video displayed in the ambient and can be customized by therapists to address the specific needs of each child.
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