Elisa Rubegni

Back-of-device authentication on smartphones

This paper presents BoD Shapes, a novel authentication method for smartphones that uses the back of the device for input. We argue that this increases the resistance to shoulder surfing while remaining reasonably fast and easy-to-use. We performed a user study (n=24) comparing BoD Shapes to PIN authentication, Android grid unlock, and a front version of our system. Testing a front version allowed us to directly compare performance and security measures between front and back authentication. Our results show that BoD Shapes is significantly more secure than the three other approaches. While performance declined, our results show that BoD Shapes can be very fast (up to 1.5 seconds in the user study) and that learning effects have an influence on its performance. This indicates that speed improvements can be expected in long-term use.

Talking to Strangers: Using Large Public Displays to Facilitate Social Interaction

Alumni events and homecomings provide opportunities to reconnect and reminiscence with old friends and colleagues, i.e., they aim to reinforce connections between community members. Although these events explicitly foster social interaction, the first step in engaging with others can still be difficult. To help “break the ice”, we have built USIAlumni Faces, a ‘yearbook’ application running on a public display that is operated via a gesture interface. We deployed USIAlumni Faces at a large university alumni event, which gave us the opportunity to observe and understand learning techniques for gesture interfaces and their role in supporting the emergence of social interaction in public spaces. We found that gesture-based interfaces support the natural diffusion of interaction patterns in public spaces through the observe-and-learn model, and that sensory-motor patterns can aid social interaction in public, as they act as conversation starters between both strangers and acquaintances.

Understanding reading experience to inform the design of ebooks for children

In this work in progress paper we explore the many facets and activities that contribute to the definition of reading experience, in particular when considering children as readers of electronic books (eBooks). We aim at understanding the importance of reading context and book choice as part of the reading experience in order to set up the main steps of a User-Centered Design (UCD) process that will result in innovative models and interfaces for more engaging childrens eBooks.

Design guidelines for more engaging electronic books: insights from a cooperative inquiry study

This paper presents the results of a cooperative inquiry study aimed at developing a prototype of enhanced eBook for leisure reading. Together with a group of 9 to 11 years old children we explored various design ideas and, starting from these ideas, we developed the eBook prototype and elaborated a shortlist of recommendations. The paper aims to extend the research on the design of childrens eBooks with a set of six guidelines that are intended to help designers in creating better and more engaging eBooks.

Fiabot!: design and evaluation of a mobile storytelling application for schools

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about how digital technology can be integrated into the formal education system. Within a longitudinal research study, which lasted four years, we conducted an investigation on how mobile technology can support educational activities as defined by a school curriculum. Among the topics included in the school curriculum, we focused on the literary field and developed a Digital StoryTelling (DST) application, Fiabot!, to support this activity. Here, we describe the design of the application and how we evaluated its impact on educational activities. The application was designed and evaluated in two primary schools. The study had the objectives of exploring whether Fiabot! supports children in achieving educational objectives defined by the curriculum, how this effectively supports teachers, and to what extent children like using it for the creation and sharing of their stories. Our findings show that the application has a positive impact on curriculum enactment and effectively supports the related educational activities. Overall, Fiabot! wasdemonstrated to be very effective in stimulating childrens discussion of a storys plot and characters. Thus, Fiabot! supported children not only in being creative but also in organizing their work and exploring a digital media opportunity. This resulted in the development of new skills and the better grounding of previously acquired knowledge, while teachers also had the opportunity to expand their teaching skills and get a taste of ICTs potential in education.

Control and scheduling interface for public displays

Social media platforms such as Flicker, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have opened up new possibilities for providing content on large public displays. Integrating interactive elements in a public display, such as (virtual) Keyboards and Webcams, can additionally stimulate in-situ content production. Both social media content and such in-situ content are cheap to produce, always fresh, and potentially community sourced, thus increasing relevance for passersby. However, not all social media applications and content entries may be appropriate in a particular display setting and showing user contributed content on public displays requires new forms of content control and scheduling. In this demo we show: 1) a control interface for display owners to manage the overall behavior of their displays, and 2) post-moderation mechanisms for controlling and removing potentially inappropriate user contributed content from public displays. The control interface and moderation mechanisms are designed for a university environment and were inspired by two short pilot test deployments and a focus group with the university officials.

Design concepts for learning spatial relationships

Maps are cognitive artifacts that represent not only the characteristics of the information space but also the use people make of the space. There are three privileged modalities by which humans learn the relationships in existing spaces: path-based learning, landmark-based learning and survey learning. These three modalities are differently sustained by maps and by the real environments. Maps afford Simultaneous experience of the space, Single point of view, Survey knowledge, Secondary spatial activity; while real environments afford Progressive Experience of the space, Multiple point of view, Procedural knowledge, Primary Spatial activity. The most important attempts to modify these differences between maps and real environments, and to merge their properties, have been: a) the creation of visual structures that enable focus + context views; b) the design of information landscapes that enable free flight in 3D space. The principles used to obtain such a view are the combination of Simultaneous and Progressive Experience of the space as a Primary spatial activity.We are designing new views for a graphic information system by merging the affordances of traditional maps and real environments for learning spatial relations. The emerging views will be presented and discussed from a theoretical point of view and exemplified in their application to the design of an information system for a National Park in Italy. The prototype of the information system was tested by human factors specialists and by end-users; the results of the test show both strength, and weakness, in the implementation of the proposed design concepts.

Comparing canonical and digital-based narrative activities in a formal educational setting

This paper is about assessing how and under which conditions digital technology interactions and activities can enhance socio-cognitive abilities in children. We address this issue through a comparison between canonical and digital-based narrative activities in a formal educational setting. The paper is based upon a case study carried on in a primary school in Lugano (CH), where children develop educational narratives in both traditional and digitalassisted formats. Three are the main issues addressed: Valorization and enhancement of different capabilities, Socialization and attitude change, Pupils collaboration strategies.

How Many Roles Can Children Play

This workshop explores the many roles children can play in the design of technology for their own use. Much literature has reported on how children have been mainly playing co-designer roles. By looking closer it emerges that children have mostly been involved in the ideation phase of design. More rarely were they actively engaged in other design phases e.g. conducting Contextual Inquiry, elaborating User Data Analysis, producing Personas, preparing Sketches and Story Boards and crafting Low and High resolution Prototypes. When it comes to evaluation, children are still mostly considered as final users while only rarely are they invited to run heuristic evaluations or even to have a more active role during the process. We would like to invite all relevant stakeholders: researchers, teachers, parents, and of course children, to share their experiences. The purpose of the workshop is also to bring their open questions and requests for guidelines and suggestions as to when and how to involve children in the various process stages. We hope to produce good definitions of the many roles children can play as co-researchers as well as to explore the benefits each participant will get from engaging with the overall design experience.

Supporting creativity in designing story authoring tools

In this paper we describe our experience in designing an application to support children in producing their stories in a formal setting, a primary school. In particular, we reflect on the implications of our findings on levels of creativity found in the produced stories. Besides, we compare two versions of our application: one is text-based and the other is image-rich. Feedback from teachers and children is presented and discussed in terms of implications for the design. We will then use our experience to revise the existing guidelines to design authoring tools to stimulate creativity.