The role of gamification in end-user development

This paper discusses the application of a gamification framework in an end-user development context, in order to investigate a possible solution to the problem of participation and collaboration overload often affecting end-user development activities. Indeed, it has been observed in the literature that when users are required to develop or adapt a system for the sake of other people (belonging or not belonging to the same community) and not just for personal use, motivation mechanisms should be implemented. With the help of an example in the field of ambient intelligence, we propose the integration of end-user development environments with gamification elements. Copyright © 2014 for the individual papers by the papers' authors

End-user development tools for the smart home: A systematic literature review

This paper presents a systematic literature review in the Internet of Things and Ambient Intelligence areas. The goal was to identify the best software tools that allow end users, namely people without competencies in computer programming, to manage and configure the behaviors of a smart home. The review selected 48 papers out of 1049 papers found through automatic and manual search. From these papers, 11 tools have been identified and analyzed by means of eight technical characteristics. Finally, among the eleven tools, six tools have been chosen for a qualitative comparison on the basis of seven design principles for smart home control proposed in a literature paper

Designing Human-Robot Collaboration for the Preparation of Personalized Medicines

Advancements in robotics and automation technologies have the potential to enable breakthrough innovations in a variety of industries, and the pharmaceutical sector is no exception. The preparation of galenic formulations, involving the compounding and dispensing of medications, when personalized medicines are needed, e.g., to overcome allergy problems, is a critical process in the field of small scale pharmaceutical manufacturing. Traditionally, this process has relied solely on human expertise of pharmacists and their manual labor, which can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and subject to variations in quality. To overcome these limitations, the use of collaborative robots is envisaged in our project. A collaborative robot can in fact work with the pharmacist synergistically, by improving accuracy and increasing productivity. However, the main challenge is providing the pharmacists with an interactive system that supports them in robot programming. In this paper, we analyze the problem from the users’ point of view and propose preliminary lowfidelity prototypes of an interactive system suitable to pharmacists’ needs and skills

Characterization of the defective interaction between a subset of natural killer cells and dendritic cells in HIV-1 infection

In this study, we demonstrate that the in vitro interactions between a CD56neg/CD16pos (CD56neg) subset of natural killer (NK) cells and autologous dendritic cells (DCs) from HIV-1–infected viremic but not aviremic individuals are markedly impaired and likely interfere with the development of an effective immune response. Among the defective interactions are abnormalities in the process of reciprocal NK–DC activation and maturation as well as a defect in the NK cell–mediated editing or elimination of immature DCs (iDCs). Notably, the lysis of mature DCs (mDCs) by autologous NK cells was highly impaired even after the complete masking of major histocompatibility complex I molecules, suggesting that the defective elimination of autologous iDCs is at the level of activating NK cell receptors. In this regard, the markedly impaired expression/secretion and function of NKp30 and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand, particularly among the CD56neg NK cell subset, largely accounts for the highly defective NK cell–mediated lysis of autologous iDCs. Moreover, mDCs generated from HIV-1 viremic but not aviremic patients are substantially impaired in their ability to secrete interleukin (IL)-10 and -12 and to prime the proliferation of neighboring autologous NK cells, which, in turn, fail to secrete adequate amounts of interferon-γ

Weaving semiotic engineering in meta-design: A case study analysis

The work presented in this paper aims at investigating how semiotic engineering and meta-design could be combined to support the development of socio-technical environments that enable End-User Development (EUD). In particular, I investigate the relationships existing between domain experts, playing the role of end-user developers, and meta-designers, mediated by EUD environments, and between end users and end-user developers mediated by EUD products. To this end, three case studies are considered, which belong to the recent research experience in EUD of the author. The case studies are concerned with three different application domains, namely physical prototyping of social products, accumulation and sharing of territory knowledge for first aid intervention, development of e-government services for the citizens of a municipality. The analysis is carried out both on the design process, by adopting a meta-design perspective, and on the product developed in each project, according to a semiotic engineering perspective. The analysis allows to shed light on the human and technical actors involved in EUD and on their communication processes, in order to understand which kinds of interaction visual languages and social conditions should be defined to encourage a continuous user-system co-evolution. As a result, the paper finally proposes some operative indications for the design of systems enabling EUD, which capitalize on semiotic engineering and meta-design ideas. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A multi-agent architecture based on active entities with an application to the control of autonomous mobile robots in a simulated environment

Dottorato di ricerca in ingegneria dell'informazioneConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7 Rome; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale - P.za Cavalleggeri, 1, Florence / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

A Survey on Digital Twin: Definitions, Characteristics, Applications, and Design Implications

When, in 1956, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was officially declared a research field, no one would have ever predicted the huge influence and impact its description, prediction, and prescription capabilities were going to have on our daily lives. In parallel to continuous advances in AI, the past decade has seen the spread of broadband and ubiquitous connectivity, (embedded) sensors collecting descriptive high dimensional data, and improvements in big data processing techniques and cloud computing. The joint usage of such technologies has led to the creation of digital twins, artificial intelligent virtual replicas of physical systems. Digital Twin (DT) technology is nowadays being developed and commercialized to optimize several manufacturing and aviation processes, while in the healthcare and medicine fields this technology is still at its early development stage. This paper presents the results of a study focused on the analysis of the state-of-the-art definitions of DT, the investigation of the main characteristics that a DT should possess, and the exploration of the domains in which DT applications are currently being developed. The design implications derived from the study are then presented: they focus on socio-technical design aspects and DT lifecycle. Open issues and challenges that require to be addressed in the future are finally discussed

Representing Visual Aspects of Web Services

Web services are more and more used on the web, but presenting them adequately in user interfaces is often difficult. In this paper, a new specification language is presented, based on the Web Service Description Language, called GWSDL (Graphic Web Service Description Language), which tries to overcome this limitation. In the proposed language, based on XML, tags to identify user interface elements are introduced; thanks to such tags, a web service presentation can be specified, also permitting its visualization on different devices and according to different users’ characteristics and preferences