Marco Romano

The Tap and Slide Keyboard: A New Interaction Method for Mobile Device Text Entry

This article introduces a new soft keyboard, named Tap and Slide, specifically designed for mobile devices. The new interaction method, on which the keyboard is based, allows performing text entry operations in a very small space, so minimizing the space required. To evaluate the keyboard from a usability point of view, three studies were performed: the first verifies whether the subjects’ abilities expressed in terms of technological knowledge may specifically provide advantages in performing text entry operations, the second tries to understand the ease of learning of the keyboard considering both accuracy and efficiency in task execution, and the third analyzes the performance of the soft keyboard in comparison with the more common QWERTY soft keyboard.

Designing Mobile Applications for Emergency Response: Citizens Acting as Human Sensors

When an emergency occurs, citizens can be a helpful support for the operation centers involved in the response activities. As witnesses to a crisis, they initially can share updated and detailed information about what is going on. Moreover, thanks to the current technological evolution people are able to quickly and easily gather rich information and transmit it through different communication channels. Indeed, modern mobile devices embed several sensors such as GPS receivers, Wi-Fi, accelerometers or cameras that can transform users into well-equipped human sensors. For these reasons, emergency organizations and small and medium enterprises have demonstrated a growing interest in developing smart applications for reporting any exceptional circumstances. In this paper, we present a practical study about this kind of applications for identifying both limitations and common features. Based on a study of relevant existent contributions in this area and our personal direct experience in developing and evaluating emergency management solutions, our aim is to propose several findings about how to design effective and efficient mobile emergency notification applications. For this purpose we have exploited the basic sensors of modern mobile devices and the users’ aptitude for using them. The evaluation consists of a practical and a theoretical part. In the practical part, we have simulated a traffic accident as closely as possible to a real scenario, with a victim lying on the ground near a car in the middle of a street. For the theoretical part, we have interviewed some emergency experts for collecting their opinions about the utility of the proposed solution. Results from this evaluation phase confirm the positive impact that EN application have for both operators’ and citizens’ perspective. Moreover, we collected several findings useful for future design challenges in the same area, as shown in the final redesign of the proposed application.

Understanding Touch and Motion Gestures for Blind People on Mobile Devices

Considering users preferences and behaviour is a necessity to develop accessible interaction for blind people. Mainstream mobile devices are widely used by people with disabilities but, despite the growing interest of the research community around accessibility issues of touch interfaces, there is still much to understand about how best to design the interaction of blind people with mobile technologies. To this end, we conducted a preliminary elicitation study (8 participants) to understand how blind people perform touch and motion gestures for common tasks on a mobile phone. We found that blind people do not use motion gestures. We provide a discussion of our results according to the type of gestures performed.

EmergenSYS: Mobile Technologies as Support for Emergency Management

Emergency response is a critical phase of the Emergency Management (EM) process. EM operators have to deal with several difficulties such as easily communicating with victims and witness and retrieving information as accurate as possible. The emergency response can be defined as the result of the negotiation between common citizens and EM operators. Information technologies and particularly the web 2.0 open up new possibilities for integrating citizens’ knowledge in the EM process. This approach not only can improve the capacity of local agencies to respond to unexpected events but also will contribute to build resilient communities aware of risks and able to mobilize their social capital to cope with disasters. In this paper we present a set of mobile tools designed to support the negotiation between common citizens and EM operators. Such tools can guide citizens in gathering effective information and keeping them informed with personalized information about the emergency.

Augmenting Smart Objects for Cultural Heritage: A Usability Experiment

In recent years the explosive growth of smartphones and the evolution of mobile communication networks have certainly revolutionized the way how people communicate and access information. This growing adoption of technology creates also some challenges. It is struggling to teach people who has had an increased exposure to technology. Cultural heritage organizations deal with this issue endlessly and look to the new technologies as an opportunity to transform and enhance the exhibition experience for matching the interest of the newest visitors. In this paper we focus on the augmented reality (AR) technologies and the role that they play to connect visitors to the modern exhibitions. Moreover, we define for the first time the concept of Augmenting Smart Object (ASO) that arises from the study of the state of the art of the AR systems applied to the cultural context and from our direct experience in a participatory design aimed at developing and evaluating an AR system for a museum exhibition.

Software Support for Multitouch Interaction: The End-User Programming Perspective

The hardware development of the past years favored the widespread diffusion of multitouch devices (such as smartphones, tablets, and interactive tabletops) to such an extent that a wide variety of users are now exploiting them to perform different activities on a daily basis. In the heterogeneous and manifold context of modern computation, it is impossible to predict, at design time, all the possible configurations of such technologies, and especially the way users will be willing to interact with them. Therefore, empowering end users with tools for developing multitouch interaction is a promising step toward the materialization of ubiquitous computing. The aim of this survey is to frame the state of the art of existing multitouch software development tools from an end-user programming (EUP) perspective.

Emergency Management and Smart Cities: Civic Engagement Through Gamification

Nowadays, an increasing amount of cities tend to improve their community life applying smart city principles. The basic idea is to connect citizens to each other, to services, infrastructures and political and non-political organizations to take advantage of a continuous collective collaboration. In this context, the Emergency Management (EM) process becomes a critical aspect. It can exploit the citizens and organizations collaboration to reduce the risks of emergencies and the response time, to act more efficiently and with a better awareness. In this paper, we describe the redesign of an Emergency Notification (EN) application that is part of a set of applications aimed at providing citizens and organizations with easy and immediate means to cooperate. The redesign is based on Gamification and the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) principles in order to improve the user experience and foster the civic participation. The new gamified design was evaluated through an exploratory focus group involving common citizens and practitioners.

A gamified platform for civic engagement in early warning

Nowadays pervasive devices like smartphones are extremely common and people use them at any moment to share normal and exceptional circumstances through social networks. Emergency Management (EM) organizations and small and medium enterprises have demonstrated a growing interest towards this peoples inclination and are developing smart applications to report potential risks to the authorities. In this context, a continuous collaboration between citizens and EM organizations is required to provide a better service. In this work, we describe a gamified mobile platform designed to support civic participation in early warning activities.

Designing an End-User Augmented Reality Editor for Cultural Practitioners

Nowadays, the rapid spread of new technologies has certainly revolutionized the way how people communicate and access information. Cultural practitioners deal with this issue endlessly and look to the new technologies as an opportunity to enhance their results in terms of exhibit experience and expressiveness. Such technology adoption needs to come along with the development of tools that make it possible for cultural practitioners to freely develop their ideas. The design of such tools for a specific category of users requires a deep knowledge of that category in order to establish appropriate usability requirements. In this paper we present a participatory design process aimed at defining solutions to support cultural practitioners in developing augmented reality applications for the specific cultural domain.

A Mobile Visual Technique to Support Civil Protection in Risk Analysis

The importance of the territory defense is becoming a more and more important activity of national civil defense agencies. In our research we describe a participatory design process involving real stakeholders from the emergency management field, which has led to the development of a mobile application supporting on-site operators. The application was based on the requirements we derived by interviewing operators on a real scenario. The utility of the application is successively described on three typical scenarios.