User-centred design, UX, usability, accessibility, and living labs - FBK Italy

User-centred design, UX, usability, accessibility, and living labs

 

Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) is a private non-profit research center based in Italy, working for the public interest. Established by a law of the Autonomous Province of Trento, FBK conducts research in the areas of Information Technology, Materials and Microsystems, Theoretical Physics, Mathematics, Historical Studies, Religious Sciences and Studies on the effectiveness of public policies. Other FBK activities include studies on behavioral economics and international politics.

 

Within FBK, i3 (Intelligent Interfaces & Interaction) focuses on designing interaction modalities for cutting-edge IT using a highly interdisciplinary approach borrowed from social sciences. We have heterogeneous backgrounds in psychology, sociology, computer science and linguistics, and our research objectives are both technological (developing innovative technologies), and social (investigating how people use and benefit from these technologies). We investigate interactive experiences aimed at improving the quality of human interactions mediated by computers.

 

Through our interdisciplinary approach, we provide a number of user-centric activities that support the development of technology at different design stages:

 

- Explorative analysis of users’ needs and everyday practices in real life settings;

 

- User-centred and participatory design of early technological concepts and prototypes to enhance technology adoption and develop technology that can really satisfy users’ needs and desires;

 

- Delivery of functional requirements;

 

- User Experience (UX) evaluation, including social/technological acceptance experiments and usability/accessibility studies on User Interface (UI), and delivery of feedback for iterative improvement of technology;

 

- Management of long term real-life trials (living labs), also involving public bodies or companies.

 

We conduct experiments using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and build on top of the involvement of large and representative panels of both consumers and stakeholders.

 

Past projects on AAL and related domain

We have a wealth of experience in european, national and local projects involving older adults in user-centred and participatory design activities, for promoting independent life and wellbeing. The following is a non-exhaustive list of projects conducted in AAL and related domains. For a more comprehensive list of our projects and activities, please visit https://i3.fbk.eu/

 

Personal Fitness Club | EIT | 2014

Partners: Università degli Studi di Trento, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Trento Rise, Create-Net, Philips

 

Objectives: Personal Fitness Club aimed at extending the period of independent living for older adults, mainly by exploiting the synergies between the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of older adults. Personal Fitness Club provides an ICT infrastructure, algorithms, sensors and interfaces that allow the creation, operation, and animation of virtual fitness clubs where older adults at different levels of capabilities can train at home, independently but with the distinct feeling of training within a fitness class, with the other club members. The level and intensity of physical activity is also individually tailored through a personalization algorithm and thanks to the remote assistance of a personal trainer.

 

Project activities: within Personal Fitness Club, we participated both in the final stage of the design and in the evaluation and validation of the system. We carried out user-centred design activities with older adults, employing user experience and usability studies, interviews and questionnaires, to define user requirements to enhance the interaction with the application. We also designed and coordinated the evaluation study, which involved 40 older adults and a personal trainer for two months of personalized training using the Personal Fitness Club application and sensors.

 

SUITCASE | PCP| 2013-2015

Partners: GPI, Trilogis, Algorab, MAPS, Trento RISE, University of Trento, Smart Crowds – HWB Territorial Lab, FBK

 

Objectives: SUITCASE (SUstainable, Integrated and Territorial CAre SErvices) aimed at developing a sustainable socio-technical environment in which new services for citizens can effectively grow, along with business opportunities to private and public organizations. The project provided primary and secondary prevention services, answering seniors’ desires to live in a secure and safe place, to enjoy social relations and to experience an overall level of comfort.

 

Project activities: within SUITCASE, i3 took care of the user-centred design activities with the stakeholders, to develop both organizational changes that foster teamwork in the call center of a health care service for seniors at home, and the user interface of the monitoring software used by the call center operators. We also developed SIMDOMO, a simulator of domestic sensorized environments that generates large amount of data from the detection of human behaviors, aimed at recognizing changes in behaviors or anomalies that would be difficult to observe in real settings or in lab, for disease prevention.

 

Acube | PAT Grandi Progetti | 2008-2011

Partners: Università degli Studi di Trento, Create-Net, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi

 

Objectives: Acube (Ambient Aware Assistance) aimed at creating an advanced and generic monitoring infrastructure for Assisted Living to: monitor complex environments such as Alzheimer facilities, nursing homes and rehabilitation centers; support assistance personnel; promote the independence and safety of patients and elderly people.

 

Project activities: i3 took care of UCD activities. Our main goal was to identify the user requirements, the overall architectural specifications of the ACube Platform along with indicators for the assessment of the final prototypes. We employed and merged two different approaches: User-Centred Design (UCD) and Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE). While UCD pushes for understanding the intricate network of relationships among the users, their tasks and their actual environment, GORE offers formal representation techniques whose models can be automatically analysed to detect conflicts and dependencies between requirements. The combination of the two methods was instrumental to properly guide the design of the complex technologies of ACube while helping to fill the gap between the end users and the developers.

 

Netcarity | FP6 | 2007-2011

Partners: CNR, MR&D Institute, Ikerlan, Bticino, SVVE, Provincia Autonoma di trento, Università degli studi di Pavia, IPC Eberhard Karls Univers Tubingen, Siemens, IBM (Cz)

 

Objectives: Within FP6, Netcarity was among the greatest IPs finalized to the design, development and experimentation of the AAL advanced technologies. In particular, Netcarity was a project researching and testing technologies that help older people to improve their wellbeing, independence, safety and health at home. The project investigated how new and existing technologies could be integrated cost effectively into people's homes, making them feel more comfortable about remaining in this familiar environment. The technology infrastructure developed during the project is open source and extensible to new services in the wellbeing and care area.

 

Project activities: within NetCarity, i3 took care of involving older adults in the UCD process of Ambient Assisted Living. We collaborated with older citizens to design and test communication technologies for independent life and wellbeing. Using cultural probes, personas-based scenarios and contextual inquiries, we investigated a new class of domestic technologies to enhance older adults’ well-being at home. An e-inclusion prototype – MobiTable – designed to support elders’ social network, was implemented and tested with a network of senior citizens living in Trentino.

 

Selected publications

 

Baez, M., Ibarra, F., Far, I. K., Ferron, M., & Casati, F. (2016). Online Group-exercises for Older Adults of Different Physical Abilities. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.05329.

Ferron, M., Mana, N., & Mich, O. (2015). Mobile for older adults: towards designing multimodal interaction. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia.

Leonardi, C., Albertini, A., Pianesi, F., & Zancanaro, M. (2010). An exploratory study of a touch-based gestural interface for elderly. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries.

Leonardi, C., Doppio, N., Lepri, B., Zancanaro, M., Caraviello, M., & Pianesi, F. (2014). Exploring long-term participation within a living lab: satisfaction, motivations and expectations. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational.

Leonardi, C., Mennecozzi, C., Not, E., Pianesi, F., & Zancanaro, M. (2008). Getting older people involved in the process of ambient assisted living research and development. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International Symposium of Gerontechnology ISG08.

Leonardi, C., Mennecozzi, C., Not, E., Pianesi, F., & Zancanaro, M. (2008). Designing a familiar technology for elderly people. Gerontechnology, 7(2), 151.

Leonardi, C., Mennecozzi, C., Not, E., Pianesi, F., Zancanaro, M., Gennai, F., & Cristoforetti, A. (2009). Knocking on elders' door: investigating the functional and emotional geography of their domestic space. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Leonardi, C., Sabatucci, L., Susi, A., & Zancanaro, M. (2010). Ahab’s leg: Exploring the issues of communicating semi-formal requirements to the final users. Paper presented at the International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering.