Marco Manca

Personalization of Context-Dependent Applications Through Trigger-Action Rules

Our life is characterized by the presence of a multitude of interactive devices and smart objects exploited for disparate goals in different contexts of use. Thus, it is impossible for application developers to predict at design time the devices and objects users will exploit, how they will be arranged, and in which situations and for which objectives they will be used. For such reasons, it is important to make end users able to easily and autonomously personalize the behaviour of their Internet of Things applications, so that they can better comply with their specific expectations. In this paper, we present a method and a set of tools that allow end users without programming experience to customize the context-dependent behaviour of their Web applications through the specification of trigger-action rules. The environment is able to support end-user specification of more flexible behaviour than what can be done with existing commercial tools, and it also includes an underlying infrastructure able to detect the possible contextual changes in order to achieve the desired behaviour. The resulting set of tools is able to support the dynamic creation and execution of personalized application versions more suitable for users’ needs in specific contexts of use. Thus, it represents a contribution to obtaining low threshold/high ceiling environments. We also report on an example application in the home automation domain, and a user study that has provided useful positive feedback.

Authoring context-dependent cross-device user interfaces based on trigger/action rules

Current authoring environments provide the possibility of developing user interfaces with limited adaptation capacities. The most widely adopted tools follow the responsive design approach and allow developers to obtain user interfaces that can adapt mainly to the screen size and orientation. We present a solution able to support development of user interfaces able to adapt to the various types of contextual events (that can be related to users, devices, environments, and social relationships), with the added possibility of distributing the user interface elements across multiple devices. The context-dependent behavior is modelled through trigger / action rules, and can even be applied to Web applications that were not originally designed to be context-aware. This paper describes the design and main features of the novel authoring environment and reports on a first user study.

A framework for the development of distributed interactive applications

In this paper we present a framework and the associated software architecture to manage user interfaces that can be distributed and/or migrated in multi-device and multi-user environments. It supports distribution across dynamic sets of devices, and does not require the use of a fixed server. We also report on its current implementation, and an example application.

Supporting multimodality in service-oriented model-based development environments

While multimodal interfaces are becoming more and more used and supported, their development is still difficult and there is a lack of authoring tools for this purpose. The goal of this work is to discuss how multimodality can be specified in model-based languages and apply such solution to the composition of graphical and vocal interactions. In particular, we show how to provide structured support that aims to identify the most suitable solutions for modelling multimodality at various detail levels. This is obtained using, amongst other techniques, the well-known CARE properties in the context of a model-based language able to support service-based applications and modern Web 2.0 interactions. The method is supported by an authoring environment, which provides some specific solutions that can be modified by the designers to better suit their specific needs, and is able to generate implementations of multimodal interfaces in Web environments. An example of modelling a multimodal application and the corresponding, automatically generated, user interfaces is reported as well.

Generation of Multi-Device Adaptive MultiModal Web Applications

This paper presents a set of tools to support multimodal adaptive Web applications. The contributions include a novel solution for generating multimodal interactive applications, which can be executed in any browser-enabled device; and run-time support for obtaining multimodal adaptations at various granularity levels, which can be specified through a language for adaptation rules. The architecture is able to exploit model-based user interface descriptions and adaptation rules in order to achieve adaptive behaviour that can be triggered by dynamic changes in the context of use. We also report on an example application and a user test concerning adaptation rules changing dynamically its multimodality.

Beyond Responsive Design: Context-Dependent Multimodal Augmentation of Web Applications

Context-dependent adaptation is becoming a continuous necessity since we access our applications in more and more variegated contexts. Multimodality can be a significant support in such changing settings. We present a solution for obtaining automatic augmentation of Web applications in such a way as to enable them to exploit various combinations of graphical and vocal modalities. We report on the software architecture supporting such augmentations and its underlying context manager, as well as some example applications and first user tests.

Extending MARIA to Support Distributed User Interfaces

In this paper, we describe a solution to obtain flexible user interface distribution across multiple devices, even supporting different modalities. For this purpose we extend a model-based language and consider various user interface granularities. We also explain how this solution works at run-time in order to support dynamic distribution of user interface elements across various devices.

Responsive task modelling

In this paper we present a new tool for specifying task models (Responsive CTT), which can be accessed through touch-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well. The tool is Web-based and responsive in order to provide adapted user interfaces to better support the most common activities in task modelling through various types of devices. We describe the relevant aspects to take into account for this purpose and how we have addressed them in designing the tool. We also report on first user tests.

Customizable dynamic user interface distribution

This paper describes a solution for flexibly obtaining distributed user interfaces across multiple devices. To this end, we propose a model-based approach, with associated authoring environment, which allows designers and developers to specify how to distribute interfaces at various granularity levels, ranging from entire user interfaces to parts of single interactive elements, and obtain the corresponding implementations. This solution includes run-time support for keeping the resulting user interfaces synchronized and customization tools that allow end users to dynamically change how the user interface elements are distributed across multiple interactive devices in order to address unforeseen situations. We also report on a first user test and how the environment has evolved according to the user feedback.

Considering task pre-conditions in model-based user interface design and generation

Deriving meaningful and consistent user interface implementations from task models is not trivial because of the large gap in terms of abstraction. This paper focuses on how to handle task preconditions in the design and generation process, an issue which has not adequately been addressed in previous work. We present a solution that is able to manage the information related to task pre-conditions at the various possible abstraction levels. The paper also reports on some example applications that show the generality of the solution and how it can be exploited in various cases.