Stefano Valtolina

Designing for End-User Development in the Internet of Things

With the widespread of Internet of Things’ devices, sensors, and applications the quantity of collected data grows enormously and the need of extracting, merging, analyzing, visualizing, and sharing it paves the way for new research challenges. This ongoing revolution of how personal devices are used and how they are becoming more and more wearable has important influences on the most well established definitions of end user and end-user development. The paper presents an analysis of the most diffused applications that allow end users to aggregate quantified-self data, originated by several sensors and devices, and to use it in personalized ways. From the outcomes of the analysis, we present a classification model for Internet of Things and new EUD paradigm and language that extends the ones existing in the current state of the art Internet of Things.

DECHO—a framework for the digital exploration of cultural heritage objects

We present a framework for the digital exploration of cultural heritage objects. Today computing and information technology is pervasive and ubiquitous and has boosted at unprecedented levels, information diffusion and productivity. Such technology is today a ripe context for succinctly gathering knowledge by combining in innovative ways powerful visualization tactics, rapid access to a significant amount of relevant information, domain-specific knowledge, and rich and pervasive tools to sort, group, and slice the information and knowledge in different ways. To this end, we present a complete framework that is easy to use, does not require expensive custom equipment, and has been designed for helping archaeology researchers and educators reconstruct and analyze the historical context of cultural heritage objects. Our main inspiration is that archaeology today would benefit significantly from having spur-of-the-moment access to information from a variety of heterogeneous data sources and being able to have multiple participants visually observe factual and visual data in an intuitive and natural setting. While we present a framework geared towards archaeology, in the long term we envision reusing it in a variety of fields. Our framework includes data acquisition, data management, and data visualization components. The data acquisition component enables the fast, easy, and accurate addition of 3D object models and factual data, including narrations. The data management component includes a novel semantic database system that provides an intuitive view of the available contents in terms of an ontology, supports the addition of narrations, integrates data stored by other databases, and supports object retrieval, browsing, and knowledge navigation. The data visualization component provides visual feedback, which is a crucial part of an exploratory endeavor. It provides the ability to alter the appearance of archaeological objects, complete fragments of 3D object models, and several compelling forms of digital inspection and information visualization. All algorithms exploit knowledge from the database and from the obtained 3D models. Visuals can be applied on top of the physical object or on a 3D model shown in a traditional display, controllable via a Web page interface.

Dissemination of Cultural Heritage Content through Virtual Reality and Multimedia Techniques: A Case Study

This paper presents the case study of an interactive digital narrative and real-time visualization of an Italian theatre during the 19th century. This case study illustrates how to integrate the traditional concepts of cultural heritage with Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. In this way virtual reconstructions of cultural sites are lift up to an exciting new edutainment level. Novel multimedia interaction devices and digital narrative representations combined with environment historical and architectural certified, offer to the users real-time immersive visualization where to live experiences of the past. Starting to the studies of several project strengthening the great benefits connected at the use of the VR technologies in the cultural fields, the paper illustrates the motivations that have triggered a collaboration between the department of Computer Science[1] and the department of Performing Arts of the University of Milano [2] in order to develop this educational and entertaining system.

Media for knowledge creation and dissemination: semantic model and narrations for a new accessibility to cultural heritage

This paper is the result of the clashing but fruitful collaboration of experts of two different cultures - Computer Science and Archaeology _ and reports on the design and development of the T.Arc.H.N.A System, a new system of accessibility towards Cultural Heritage of the Etruscan culture. The first important result of the collaboration is the rise of an interdisciplinary team of cultural operators, which emerged from the confrontation of the different experiences acquired in each proper field of common research. As a consequence of such a confrontation process, the team was in need of new tools of expression, and communication. An ontology was defined as a new medium for communication between Computer Scientists and Archeologists. New media to record the results of the archaeological researches were introduced to disseminate knowledge to a large public in a novel, context adaptive way. The setting of these media are the base for the implementation of the working seed of the T.Arc.H.N.A System. The paper presents this open and participatory system where different actors cooperate to create and disseminate knowledge about cultural assets.

Towards a User-Friendly Loading System for the Analysis of Big Data in the Internet of Things

In the Internet of Things (IoT) era, we need to face increased masses of cross-domain data stored in different formats (either relational, XML, JSON, textual) and data streams (produced by sensors), that can be highly or loosely structured and need to be integrated for analysis. Recently, many NoSQL systems (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, HBASE) have been born for coping the scalability issues of current analysis approaches. They all are based on different data models and present different performances based on structure, size and location of data distributed on clusters. While the research community is really active in the development of techniques for big data analysis, at current stage a comprehensive solution that supports the user in loading data from heterogeneous sources and in integrating them into the most suitable NoSQL system is still lacking. In this paper we propose the design and expected functionalities of Big Loader, a user-friendly loading system for NoSQL systems that allows the specification of the conceptual schema of the data to be loaded, the specification of the sources from which the data should be gathered in order to feed the conceptual schema and finally we outline intelligent strategies for the selection of the NoSQL system where the conceptual scheme can be deployed.

Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age: Empowering End Users to Improve Their Quality of Life

The International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - Empowering End Users to Improve their Quality of Life (CoPDA) focuses on how ICT can have an impact on “quality of life”, promoting new ways of design that allow us to face these challenges.. The workshop brings together contributions from researchers from a diverse range of interdisciplinary fields. The aim is to establish a community of researchers and practitioners and facilitate the production of a coherent body of work related to this area.

Visual mediation mechanisms for collaborative design and development

Collaborative design involving end users has emerged as a response to the needs felt by various organizations of adapting software to specific environments and users. During time, users and environments evolve; this is another reason why software has to be modified. Different stakeholders, including consultants, designers internal to the organization and, recently, end users, have to collaborate among themselves, and possibly with the software providers, to shape software. Such stakeholders face fundamental challenges in learning how to communicate and in building a shared understanding. Researchers are now addressing such challenges. This paper contributes to this innovative research by formally defining visual mediation mechanisms for collaborative design. A case study illustrating their application is discussed.

Threat Modelling for SQL Servers

In this paper we present the results from an analysis focusing on security threats that can arise against an SQL server when included in Web application environments. The approach used is based on the STRIDE classification methodology. The results presented provide also some general guidelines and countermeasures against the different attacks that can exploit the identified vulnerabilities.

An ontology-based approach to product customization

Mass customization refers to the increase in variety and customization of the manufactured products and services. It is now economically feasible thanks to the availability of computer-aided manufacturing systems, which allow people to customize standard products, and to Internet, through which many online retailers now operate, thus eliminating the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution that, in past years, prevented the production of niche products because of their high production costs. To permit mass customization, several software-based product configurators are available on the Web: they guide people in adapting a product to their needs and desires. A drawback of such configurators is the limited range of changes permitted. We present in this paper a system that gives people more freedom in creating products that best fit their desires, thanks to the use of an ontology, which models the possible product compositions that users can perform. The proposed solution is shown through a case study, which refers to furniture production.

Collaborative Environments: Accessibility and Usability for Users with Special Needs

Accessibility and usability are relevant characteristics when considering the design and development of interactive environments especially when the target users have different forms of disability. Guaranteeing the inclusion of such characteristics poses new challenges in Web 2.0 collaborative environments because their users can have the role of both producers and consumers of information (the produsers of information). The purpose of this chapter is to specify the expected characteristics of accessible and usable collaborative systems tailored for produsers who have special needs. Hence, usability models are reviewed and the W3C guidelines and approaches for guaranteeing accessibility are reported. Then an accessible e-learning wiki-based environment is presented and, finally, a specific usability model is proposed that could overcome some of the problems that have emerged when analyzing the usability of such a collaborative environment.