1,721,149 research outputs found
Weaving semiotic engineering in meta-design: A case study analysis
No full textThe 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
Towards a New Work Practice in the Development of e-Government Applications
No full textThis paper proposes a novel approach to the development of e-government applications for citizens and public administration employees. The approach has been derived by following a methodology based on participatory action research and design science. The general goal is favoring an organization change internally to government agencies, among different agencies, and between citizens and public administration. Therefore, the paper delineates how the current work practice for e-government service development could be improved, by proposing a set of methods and tools that foster the active participation of civil servants. To show how the new work practice could take place, the creation of an example service is discussed. Positive feedbacks from real users suggest that the approach represents a promising research direction in the e-government domain
Evaluating Quality in Use of Corporate Web Sites
No full textIn our prior work, we presented a novel approach to the evaluation of quality in use of corporate web sites based on an original quality model (QM-U) and a related methodology (EQ-EVAL). This article focuses on two research questions. The first one aims at investigating whether expected quality obtained through the application of EQ-EVAL methodology by employing a small panel of evaluators is a good approximation of actual quality obtained through experimentation with real users. To answer this research question, a comparative study has been carried out involving 5 evaluators and 50 real users. The second research question aims at demonstrating that the adoption of the EQ-EVAL methodology can provide useful information for web site improvement. Three original indicators, namely coherence, coverage and ranking have been defined to answer this question, and an additional study comparing the assessments of two panels of 5 and 10 evaluators, respectively, has been carried out. The results obtained in both studies are largely positive and provide a rational support for the adoption of the EQ-EVAL methodology
Modeling robot cognitive activity through active mental entities
No full textThis paper aims to lay down the foundations of an approach to the development of autonomous robot control architecture based on the explicit representation of mental attitudes underlying robot behavior, considered as autonomous active entities. The approach is intended to integrate concepts from the area of distributed architectures and of mental attitude representation and it is claimed to allow the achievement of both robust and sophisticated robot behavior. Starting from an analysis of the evolution of autonomous robot control architectures, the introduction of active mental entities in the context of a distributed control architecture is discussed and motivated. Attention is then focused on two classes of mental entities, namely intention and persuasion, and their main features are illustrated and discussed. A prototypical implementation of the proposed paradigm and its application to the control of Khepera simulator are then described. A comparison with related works and a discussion of the main directions of future research conclude the paper
A practical approach to the assessment of quality in use of corporate web sites
No full textThe paper presents a practical approach to web site quality, based on a novel perspective that considers the relationships between the web site and its stakeholders. This perspective leads to identify four fundamental concepts of quality: final quality, quality in use, basic quality and internal quality. This paper focuses on quality in use, and proposes a new quality model including a well structured and balanced set of characteristics and sub-characteristics, which aim at capturing the main dimensions that impact on the quality of a web site. The distinction between actual and expected quality is then introduced and a practical assessment methodology for expected quality (EQ-EVAL) is proposed, which employs expert evaluators instead of actual users in order to make the evaluation less expensive, without sacrificing, however, accuracy and reliability. The results of the application of the methodology in the evaluation of a sample set of corporate web sites are finally discussed, showing how the model and the methodology can indeed meet the stated requirements
Knowledge-Centered Design of Decision Support Systems for Emergency Management
No full textThis paper focuses on the design of decision support systems for emergency managers in charge of planning, coordinating and controlling the actions carried out to respond to a critical situation. A novel knowledge-centered design methodology is proposed and demonstrated through the application in a concrete case study in the field of pandemic flu emergency management. Knowledge-centered design is based on a rational and structured approach to the elicitation and modeling of the knowledge concerning the target environment, the application domain, the intended users, their tasks, and the specific activities that the decision support system is expected to provide. Our proposal aims at overcoming some of the limitations of user-centered and activity-centered design in the specific context of decision support systems. Knowledge-centered design is based on an iterative process that goes through four main phases, namely: target environment identification, domain understanding, user characterization, and functional analysis. The paper illustrates each phase in detail and discusses the application in the proposed case study
'Design for all' versus 'one-size-fits-all': The case of cultural heritage
No full textThis paper would like to discuss the design trade-offs that might emerge during the development of technological solutions for promoting and enhancing the fruition of cultural heritage. To this aim, the paper briefly describes the UniBSArt4All project, which employs advanced interactive technologies, such as artwork recognition and wireless sensors, to obtain engaging and accessible visitor experiences customized to different users' profiles. By reflecting on the project development and its preliminary results, the paper finally proposes a meta-design approach to inclusive design in the CH domain. Copyright © 2018 for the individual papers by the papers' authors
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