HikePal: A mobile exergame to motivate people with intellectual disabilities to do outdoor physical activities

People with intellectual disabilities often have a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to long-term issues like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity and depression. Although literature shows that the main reason for this is the lack of motivation to do physical activity, scarce research has been done in accessible apps to track and foster physical activities that address motivation. This paper presents HikePal, a game-inspired app to motivate individuals with intellectual disabilities to do physical activity outdoors. We have followed a design and creation research strategy using 1) semi-structured interviews with five experts (health care workers, special education experts and software engineers); 2) a focus group with an occupational therapist, a physical therapist and four software engineers; 3) a pilot user test with three individuals with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. Having social interaction during the physical activity turned out to be a major motivational aspect of the system, whereas reward systems did not attract much of the users’ attention. Regarding the adapted navigational assistance, we found out that easy-to-read text, visual communication and street-level pictures were the key features to achieve successful and understandable guidance outdoors for people with intellectual disabilities. It proved useful to perform a test on the field and to refine the design guidelines in view of a forthcoming large-scale experimental test involving a larger number of persons with intellectual, sensory and motor disabilities

Developing Software for Motivating Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities to do Outdoor Physical Activity

Proceedings of International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society, Seoul, Republic of KoreaPeople with intellectual disabilities (IDs) often have a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to long-term issues like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity and depression. Few games and apps promoting physical activity for people with IDs exist, and they do not have a focus on the motivational aspect. This paper aims to find how to develop software that can motivate people with IDs to do physical activity outdoors. For this purpose, we have followed a design and creation research strategy using several qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews with health care workers, special education experts and software engineers; a focus group with occupational therapists, physical therapists and software engineers; and a preliminary pilot user test with 3 users and 2 caregivers aiming to a test of the software on the field and at the refinement of its specifications. Having social interaction during the physical activity turned out to be a major motivational aspect of the system, whereas rewards systems did not attract much of the users' attention. Regarding the adapted navigational assistance, easy-to-read text, visual communication and street-level pictures were the key features to achieve successful and understandable guidance outdoors for people with intellectual disabilities

What motivates patients with NCDs to follow up their treatment?

Workshop at the 31st Medical Informatics Europe virtual conference, 29.05.21 - 31.05.21: https://efmi.org/2020/12/10/31st-medical-informatics-europe-conference-mie2021-athens-greece/.The increasing use of mobile health (mHealth) tools for self-management is considered to be important to improve health effects for patients with chronic NCDs (noncommunicable diseases). This development is supported by an increasing number of available mHealth apps. The apps range from disease management apps (e.g., diabetes diary) to health and fitness apps (e.g., dietary apps and workout apps). However, there seems to be a lack of motivation from most users to keep using these health apps over a long period of time [1]. This may be because of the way these apps were designed and developed, i.e. lack of co-participatory design techniques and lack of a tested developer guideline for creating mHealth solutions. The motivation behind this workshop is to identify motivational factors which will increase adoption and usage of mHealth apps. Since 2001, several of the presenters have been working on self-management tools for people with diabetes [2, 3]. The main tool is a diabetes diary – the “Few Touch Application” (Norwegian, “Diabetesdagboka”), available for free from Google Play, and used by several thousands of users [4-8]

Sorterius - An augmented reality app for encouraging outdoor physical activity for people with intellectual disabilities

Many with intellectual disabilities (ID) have difficulties adhering to current physical activity guidelines. The goal of this study was to develop a mobile app for assisting people with ID to be more physically active. We implemented a solution that combines the digital and real world using augmented reality (AR). Eight people working with people with ID (special education teachers, social workers, psychologists, and researchers) tested the app and completed a usability test. Results indicate that a mobile app focusing on everyday life scenarios can have a potential value for the targeted user group, but AR solutions can be challenging.publishedVersionPaid open acces

Guest Editorial: High-Level Parallel Programming and Applications

Guest editorial for the International Journal of Parallel Programming special issue on High-Level Parallel Programming and Application

Pionieri fra due culture. Informatica umanistica a Pisa in onore di Maria Simi

Le ricerche interdisciplinari da un lato sono cruciali per l’avanzamento delle conoscenze scientifiche e per l’impatto di queste conoscenze sulla società, dall’altro spesso sono frenate od ostacolate a livello accademico. L’Informatica Umanistica e le Digital Humanities a Pisa sono un esempio relativamente recente ed eclatante di questa apparente contraddizione. Perché essere interdisciplinari? Perché investire nelle Digital Humanities? Perché scegliere la via dei Pionieri tra due culture? Ognuno degli autori di questo libro scritto in onore del pensionamento di Maria Simi ha dato la sua risposta in termini di didattica, ricerca e legame con le esigenze della società odierna. Una risposta certo varia e articolata, come d’altronde è la galassia dell’Informatica Umanistica, ma che intende rendere conto, anche se in minima parte, del lavoro condotto a Pisa in questo settore dall’inizio del secolo. E di quanto ancora potrebbe essere fatto

A Transformational Framework for Skeletal Programs: Overview and Case Study

A structured approach to parallel programming allows to construct applications by composing skeletons, i.e., recurring patterns of task- and data-parallelism. First academic and commercial experience with skeleton-based systems has demonstrated both the benefits of the approach and the lack of a special methodology for algorithm design and performance prediction. In the paper, we take a first step toward such a methodology, by developing a general transformational framework named FAN, and integrating it with an existing skeleton-based programming system, P3L. The framework includes a new functional abstract notation for expressing parallel algorithms, a set of semantics-preserving transformation rules, and analytical estimates of the rules' impact on the program performance. The use of FAN is demonstrated on a case study: we design a parallel algorithm for the maximum segment sum problem, translate the algorithm in P3L, and experiment with the target C+MPI code on a Fujitsu AP1000 parallel machine

On the implementation of the MAP paradigm on a 2D-mesh

Parallelism, Optimal Data Distribution/Collection, P3L This document describes the MAP paradigm of parallelism and the problems related to its e cient imple- mentation on a 2D-mesh. In particular, we rst discuss how parallel algorithms ex- ploiting MAP parallelism can be easily expressed by using the P3L Map construct. Then, we discuss an implementation template for a massively parallel architecture with a 2D-mesh topology and Transputer-like processing nodes. The template is asymptotically optimal with respect to the strategies embedded for data distribu- tion, data collection and process allocatio

Optimal On Demand Packet Scheduling in Single Hop Multichannel Communication Systems

In this paper, we study the problem of on demand minimum length packet scheduling in single-hop multichannel systems. Examples of these systems are those centered around switching networks, like crossbar switches, and WDM optical fiber networks. On demand scheduling require that packets are scheduled upon receipt, and without changing the schedule of earlier packets. On demand scheduling is performed by on-line algorithms. In this paper we show that a large group of on-line scheduling algorithms, called maximal algorithms, are asymptotically optimal (in the worst case sense). This result is established by first giving the competitive ratio of these algorithms (nearly 3), and then by showing that no on-line algorithm can (asymptotically) perform better in the worst case. Then, we run a simulation experiment on randomly generated problem instances, whose outcome indicates an average increase of the schedule length of maximal algorithms, of 5% with respect to the lower bound