Michela Ferron

Daily Stress Recognition from Mobile Phone Data, Weather Conditions and Individual Traits

Research has proven that stress reduces quality of life and causes many diseases. For this reason, several researchers devised stress detection systems based on physiological parameters. However, these systems require that obtrusive sensors are continuously carried by the user. In our paper, we propose an alternative approach providing evidence that daily stress can be reliably recognized based on behavioral metrics, derived from the users mobile phone activity and from additional indicators, such as the weather conditions (data pertaining to transitory properties of the environment) and the personality traits (data concerning permanent dispositions of individuals). Our multifactorial statistical model, which is person-independent, obtains the accuracy score of 72.28% for a 2-class daily stress recognition problem. The model is efficient to implement for most of multimedia applications due to highly reduced low-dimensional feature space (32d). Moreover, we identify and discuss the indicators which have strong predictive power.

Pervasive stress recognition for sustainable living

In this paper we provide the evidence that daily stress can be reliably recognized based on human behavior metrics derived from the mobile phone activity (call log, sms log, bluetooth interactions). We introduce an original approach for feature extraction, selection, recognition model training and discuss the experimental results based on Random Forest and Gradient Boosted Machine algorithms. Random Forest based model showed low variance comparing to the GBM-based one, thus winning the bias-variance tradeoff and preventing over-fitting, given the noisy source data. Potential impact of the technology is reducing stress and enhancing subjective well-being for sustainable living.

The interplay of physical and social wellbeing in older adults: investigating the relationship between physical training and social interactions with virtual social environments

Background. Regular physical activity can substantially improve the physical wellbeing of older adults, preventing several chronic diseases and increasing cognitive performance and mood. However, research has shown that older adults are the most sedentary segment of society, spending much of their time seated or inactive. A variety of barriers make it difficult for older adults to maintain an active lifestyle, including logistical difficulties in going to a gym (for some adults, leaving home can be challenging), reduced functional abilities, and lack of motivation. In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of Gymcentral. A training application running on tablet was designed to allow older adults to follow a personalized home-based exercise program while being remotely assisted by a coach. The objective of the study was to assess if a virtual gym that enables virtual presence and social interaction is more motivating for training than the same virtual gym without social interaction. Methods. A total of 37 adults aged between 65 and 87 years old (28 females and 9 males, mean age = 71, sd = 5.8) followed a personalized home-based strength and balance training plan for eight weeks. The participants performed the exercises autonomously at home using the Gymcentral application. Participants were assigned to two training groups: the Social group used an application with persuasive and social functionalities, while the Control group used a basic version of the service with no persuasive and social features. We further explored the effects of social facilitation, and in particular of virtual social presence, in user participation to training sessions. Outcome measures were adherence, persistence and co-presence rate. Results. Participants in the Social group attended significantly more exercise sessions than the Control group, providing evidence of a better engagement in the training program. Besides the focus on social persuasion measures, the study also confirms that a virtual gym service is effective for supporting individually tailored home-based physical training for older adults. The study also confirms that social facilitation tools motivate users to train together in a virtual fitness environment. Discussion. The study confirms that Gymcentral increases the participation of older adults in physical training compare to a similar version of the application without How to cite this article Khaghani Far et al. (2015), The interplay of physical and social wellbeing in older adults: investigating the relationship between physical training and social interactions with virtual social environments. PeerJ Comput. Sci. 1:e30; DOI 10.7717/peerjcs.30 social and persuasive features. In addition, a significant increase in the co-presence of the Social group indicates that social presence motivates the participants to join training sessions at the same time with the other participants. These results are encouraging, as they motivate further research into using home-based training programs as an opportunity to stay physically and socially active, especially for those who for various reasons are bound to stay at home. Subjects Human–Computer Interaction, Emerging Technologies, Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing, Network Science and Online Social Networks

An Empirical Analysis on Social Capital and Enterprise 2.0 Participation in a Research Institute

Social capital broadly refers to the opportunities an individual has by being part of a network of relationships. Recently organizations started deploying internal Enterprise 2.0 platforms and Social Network Sites (SNS) to improve how employees collaborate and work. In this paper we report our analysis of the relationships between social capital and the use of a SNS in a research institute. Data collected through a survey from 54% of its 670 employees have been investigated with factor and regression analysis. We found users enabled to use the system, currently one third of all employees, have significantly higher social capital. Moreover social capital correlates with self-reported intensity of SNS usage, while we did not find statistically significant correlation with real usage extracted from system logs but for the unexpected fact that heavy users exhibit a smaller knowledge of their colleagues. We also find significant relationships between social capital and different demographic features such as seniority, job role, age, gender. There are few studies analyzing the real impact of SNSs on employees ability to collaborate. We believe further work is needed in this area so we released the SNS we developed as open source software, aiming at promoting its adoption by other organizations. We also released the dataset we collected in this analysis for comparative purposes.

Effects of online group exercises for older adults on physical, psychological and social wellbeing: a randomized pilot trial

Background Intervention programs to promote physical activity in older adults, either in group or home settings, have shown equivalent health outcomes but different results when considering adherence. Group-based interventions seem to achieve higher participation in the long-term. However, there are many factors that can make of group exercises a challenging setting for older adults. A major one, due to the heterogeneity of this particular population, is the difference in the level of skills. In this paper we report on the physical, psychological and social wellbeing outcomes of a technology-based intervention that enable online group exercises in older adults with different levels of skills. Methods A total of 37 older adults between 65 and 87 years old followed a personalized exercise program based on the OTAGO program for fall prevention, for a period of eight weeks. Participants could join online group exercises using a tablet-based application. Participants were assigned either to the Control group, representing the traditional individual home-based training program, or the Social group, representing the online group exercising. Pre- and post- measurements were taken to analyze the physical, psychological and social wellbeing outcomes. Results After the eight-weeks training program there were improvements in both the Social and Control groups in terms of physical outcomes, given the high level of adherence of both groups. Considering the baseline measures, however, the results suggest that while in the Control group fitter individuals tended to adhere more to the training, this was not the case for the Social group, where the initial level had no effect on adherence. For psychological outcomes there were improvements on both groups, regardless of the application used. There was no significant difference between groups in social wellbeing outcomes, both groups seeing a decrease in loneliness despite the presence of social features in the Social group. However, online social interactions have shown to be correlated to the decrease in loneliness in the Social group. Conclusion The results indicate that technology-supported online group-exercising which conceals individual differences in physical skills is effective in motivating and enabling individuals who are less fit to train as much as fitter individuals. This not only indicates the feasibility of training together despite differences in physical skills but also suggests that online exercise might reduce the effect of skills on adherence in a social context. However, results from this pilot are limited to a small sample size and therefore are not conclusive. Longer term interventions with more participants are instead recommended to assess impacts on wellbeing and behavior change.

Online Group-Exercises for Older Adults of Different Physical Abilities

In this paper we describe the design and validation of a virtual fitness environment aiming at keeping older adults physically and socially active. We target particularly older adults who are socially more isolated, physically less active, and with less chances of training in a gym. The virtual fitness environment, namely Gymcentral, was designed to enable and motivate older adults to follow personalised exercises from home, with a (heterogeneous) group of remote friends and under the remote supervision of a Coach. We take the training activity as an opportunity to create social interactions, by complementing training features with social instruments. Finally, we report on the feasibility and effectiveness of the virtual environment, as well as its effects on the usage and social interactions, from an intervention study in Trento, Italy.

Mobile multimodal interaction for older and younger users: exploring differences and similarities

Since they can integrate a wide range of interactive modalities, multimodal interfaces are considered to improve accessibility for a variety of users, including older adults. However, only few works have actually explored how older adults approach multimodal interaction outside specific contexts and have done so mainly in comparison to much younger users. This study explores how older (65+ years old), middle-aged (55-65 years old) and younger adults (25-35 years old) use mobile multimodal interaction in an everyday activity (i.e. taking photos with a tablet) by using midair gestures and voice commands, and investigates the differences and similarities between the considered age groups. Preliminary findings from a video-analysis show that all groups easily combine the proposed modalities when interacting with a tablet device. Furthermore, compared to younger adults, older and middle-aged adults show similarities in the way they perform gesture and voice commands.

Ubiquitous games and gamification for well-being

Ubiquitous games and gamification have recently become a widely applied approach for promoting well-being and improving health behaviours such as a physically active lifestyle. In this Special Issue of the Journal ICST Transactions on Ambient Systems, we collected a selection of high-quality papers presented at the workshop on “Ubiquitous games and gamification for promoting behaviour change and wellbeing”, held at the 2013 CHItaly Conference. The articles explore different areas where ubiquitous games and gamification can influence the attitudes, health and behaviours of people towards well-being, from the management of diseases to eco-sustainable mobility, from serious moral games to the monitoring of burnout levels and the well-being of small groups during social occasions such as museum visits.

Design of Multimodal Interaction with Mobile Devices - Challenges for Visually Impaired and Elderly Users

This paper presents two early studies aimed at investigating issues concerning the design of multimodal interaction based on voice commands and mid-air gestures with mobile technology specifically designed for visually impaired and elderly users. These studies have been carried out on a new device allowing enhanced speech recognition (interpreting lip movements) and mid-air gesture interaction on Android devices (smartphone and tablet PC). The initial findings and challenges raised by these novel interaction modalities are discussed. These mainly centre on issues of feedback and feedforward, the avoidance of false positives and point of reference or orientation issues regarding the device and the mid-air gestures.

Designing, Implementing and Evaluating Mid-Air Gestures and Speech-Based Interaction

The goal of this half-day workshop is to investigate effective ways to leverage the recent advances in the automatic recognition of mid-air gestures and speech commands, with a special focus on (but not limited to) interaction with mobile technology and inclusive design for older adults and people with special needs. In particular, the workshop aims to investigate these issues from a multidisciplinary prospective by bringing together experts on interaction design, user experience, usability, accessibility, innovative hardware and software solutions that are related to technology based on mid-air gestures, speech and multi-modal interaction.