A UI-centric Approach for the End-User Development of Multidevice Mashups

In recent years, models, composition paradigms, and tools for mashup development have been proposed to support the integration of information sources, services and APIs available on the Web. The challenge is to provide a gate to a “programmable Web,” where end users are allowed to construct easily composite applications that merge content and functions so as to satisfy the long tail of their specific needs. The approaches proposed so far do not fully accommodate this vision. This article, therefore, proposes a mashup development framework that is oriented toward the End-User Development. Given the fundamental role of user interfaces (UIs) as a medium easily understandable by the end users, the proposed approach is characterized by UI-centric models able to support a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) specification of data integration and service orchestration. It, therefore, contributes to the definition of adequate abstractions that, by hiding the technology and implementation complexity, can be adopted by the end users in a kind of “democratic” paradigm for mashup development. This article also shows how model-to-code generative techniques translate models into application schemas, which in turn guide the dynamic instantiation of the composite applications at runtime. This is achieved through lightweight execution environments that can be deployed on the Web and on mobile devices to support the pervasive use of the created applications.</jats:p

A Visual Paradigm for Defining Task Automation

In the last years, researchers are devoting many efforts to improve technological aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), while little attention has dedicated to social and practical sides. Professional developers program the behavior of smart objects. In addition, often the functionality exposed by a single object are not able, alone, to exhaustively support the end users' tasks. The opportunities offered by IoT can be amplified if new highlevel abstractions and interaction paradigms enable also non-technical users to compose the behavior of multiple objects. To fulfill this goal, we present a model to express rules for smart object composition, which includes new operators for defining rules coupling multiple events and conditions exposed by smart objects, and for defining temporal and spatial constraints on rule activation. Such model has been implemented in a Web application whose composition paradigm has been designed during an elicitation study with 25 participants

Empowering CH experts to produce IoT-enhanced visits

This demo presents EFESTO-5W, a platform for the definition of IoT-enhanced visits to Cultural-Heritage (CH) sites. Its main characteristic is an End-User Development paradigm applied to the IoT technologies and customized for the CH domain, which allows different stakeholders to configure the behavior of smart objects for creating more engaging visit experiences

Empowering CH experts to produce IoT-enhanced visits

This demo presents EFESTO-5W, a platform for the definition of IoT-enhanced visits to Cultural-Heritage (CH) sites. Its main characteristic is an End-User Development paradigm applied to the IoT technologies and customized for the CH domain, which allows different stakeholders to configure the behavior of smart objects for creating more engaging visit experiences

End-user composition of interactive applications through actionable UI components

Developing interactive systems to access and manipulate data is a very tough task. In particular, the development of user interfaces (UIs) is one of the most time-consuming activities in the software lifecycle. This is even more demanding when data have to be retrieved by accessing flexibly different online resources. Indeed, software development is moving more and more toward composite applications that aggregate on the fly specific Web services and APIs. In this article, we present a mashup model that describes the integration, at the presentation layer, of UI components. The goal is to allow non-technical end users to visualize and manipulate (i.e., to perform actions on) the data displayed by the components, which thus become actionable UI components. This article shows how the model has guided the development of a mashup platform through which non-technical end users can create component-based interactive workspaces via the aggregation and manipulation of data fetched from distributed online resources. Due to the abundance of online data sources, facilitating the creation of such interactive workspaces is a very relevant need that emerges in different contexts. A utilization study has been performed in order to assess the benefits of the proposed model and of the Actionable UI Components; participants were required to perform real tasks using the mashup platform. The study results are reported and discussed

Informing Observers: Quality-driven Filtering and Composition of Web 2.0 Sources

Current Web technologies enable an active role of users, who can create and share their contents very easily. This mass of information includes opinions about a variety of key interest topics and represents a new and invaluable source of marketing information. Public and private organizations that aim at understanding and analyzing this unsolicited feedback need adequate platforms that can support the detection and monitoring of key topics. Hence, there is an emerging trend towards automated market intelligence and the crafting of tools that allow monitoring in a mechanized fashion. We therefore present an approach that is based on quality of Web 2.0 sources as the key factor for information filtering and also allows the users to flexibly and easily compose their analysis environments thanks to the adoption of a mashup platform

MakeNodes: Opening connected-IoT making to people with intellectual disability

Recent developments in accessible electronic-making toolkits have opened up avenues for individuals with intellectual disabilities(ID) to actively participate in creating their own smart objects based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. These toolkits present a novel opportunity to foster the inclusion of this oftenunder-considered community in the development of personalized solutions that can impact their autonomy and well-being. However, understanding IoT encompasses comprehending the inter-object connection paradigm at the core of this technology, an aspect that is not adequately covered by the existing accessible toolkits. To fill this gap, this paper illustrates the design and evaluation of MakeNodes, a tangible toolkit to involve people with ID in making smart-thing networks in a guided, collaborative, and engaging way. The toolkit comprises a series of input and output nodes that can be paired to make any object or surface smart. The paper illustrates how MakeNodes empowers people with ID through IoT-making activities that promote collaborative work to address personal needs. Key findings are discussed in the form of lessons learned concerning the importance of physical and visual elements, hands-on exploration, and interaction robustness in improving the accessibility of IoT-making toolkits for people with ID

The evolution of a toolkit for smart-thing design with children through action research

Several workshops use toolkits to engage children in the design of smart things, that is, everyday things like toys enhanced with computing devices and capabilities. In general, the toolkits focus on one design stage or another, e.g., ideation or programming. Few toolkits are created to guide children through an entire design process. This paper presents a toolkit for smart-thing design with children. It revolves around SNaP, a card-based board game for children. The toolkit serves to frame the entire design process and guide them through their exploration, ideation, programming and prototyping of their own smart things. By embracing action research, the toolkit was adopted in actions with children, namely, design workshops. Results of actions were reflected over by considering children’s benefits, and they were used to make the toolkit evolve across cycles of action, reflection and development. The paper reports on the latest evolution cycles, ending with the 2020 cycle for continuing smart-thing design during COVID-19 times. The paper concludes with general reflections concerning action research and design with children, toolkits for framing smart-thing design with children, on-going and future work

User Profile Based Activities in Flexible Processes

International audienceCOOPER platform is a collaborative, open environment that leverages on the idea of flexible, user-centric process support. It allows cooperating team members to define collaborative processes and flexibly modify the process activities even during process execution. In this paper we describe how the incorporation of decentralized user data through mashups, allows the COOPER platform to support the definition and execution of the so called user profile based activities, i.e., process activities that are adapted based on the preferences of the process actors. We define two basic types of user profile based activities, namely user adapted activities and user conditional activities. The first are modeled according to the user profile data, while the second employs the same user data to enable automatic workflow decisions

Co-designing the integration of voice-based conversational AI and web augmentation to amplify web inclusivity

The Web has become an essential resource but is not yet accessible to everyone. Assistive technologies and innovative, intelligent frameworks, for example, those using conversational AI, help overcome some exclusions. However, some users still experience barriers. This paper shows how a human-centered approach can shed light on technology limitations and gaps. It reports on a three-step process (focus group, co-design, and preliminary validation) that we adopted to investigate how people with speech impairments, e.g., dysarthria, browse the Web and how barriers can be reduced. The methodology helped us identify challenges and create new solutions, i.e., patterns for Web browsing, by combining voice-based conversational AI, customized for impaired speech, with techniques for the visual augmentation of web pages. While current trends in AI research focus on more and more powerful large models, participants remarked how current conversational systems do not meet their needs, and how it is important to consider each one's specificity for a technology to be called inclusive