Accessible and Inclusive design

In the past museums have been slow in fully utilising new technologies, but in the last decade this situation has changed dramatically. The need for more support to visitors and more collaboration between experts and between museums has led to the exploration of how new technologies can extend the traditional museum. In this paper a new concept of such an extended museum is presented, with particular attention to gathering, organization and consumption of knowledge.

When we go to the museum, we see many interesting objects that have fascinating stories related to them. However, visitors do not often share these experiences with people that have not visited the exhibition. Sharing is beneficial both because it can create interest and attract people to the museum, and because it can help people who cannot attend the visit (for example, is physically unable to do so) to still enjoy it. We were interested to understand the extent and motivation behind sharing (or not sharing) and test how to encourage visitors to do so. We conducted and are conducting various surveys and trials, for which we report the preliminary results in this paper. Initial findings show that i) people today rarely share their visits for lack of content to complement their storytelling, and ii) by providing visitors with a simple and easy-to-create virtual photobook with their dearest memories from the visit we can significantly enhance this sharing.

The paper describes the design process and a preliminary study of a novel interface (digital booklet) for facilitating sharing of museums experiences and specifically for helping older adults to participate remotely to museum visits done by friends or relatives. We design in particular for people that for cognitive, physical, or logistic limitations are not able to visit museums, or for which it is very challenging to do so. We performed a user study with a total of 30 older adult participants, 21 in care home (10 of which with significant cognitive decline), and 9 participants in daily center (all of them without degenerative health problems). Our main hypothesis was that given the right set of tools for supporting the visitor during and after the visit we could increase sharing and reach wider audiences, including older and cognitively impaired adults. We compared the performance between healthy and cognitively impaired older adults on four tasks: open the booklet, browse the booklet, zoom in/out a picture, close the picture after being zoomed in/out. Our results showed that the booklet metaphor was well accepted by almost all the participants and they were able to consume and enjoy the content; the more complex and less intuitive functions like zooming and closing a picture were found to be more difficult for the the cognitively impaired group of participants. Our results can contribute the ongoing research in the field of interfaces for older adults and the challenge of intergenerational communication.

Most museums try to find with different ways to prolong the museum experience outside of the museum environment and facilitate its sharing after the visit. The main reason is two-fold: it can create interest and attract people to the museum, and it can help people who for various cognitive or physical limitations cannot attend the visit, to still enjoy it. We conducted couple of surveys and we designed a possible platform for facilitating sharing, for which we report the preliminary results in this paper. Our findings show that i) although visitors claim that they would like to share their visit, the number of the actual sharing visitors is significantly low, ii) most of the visitors use only verbal narrations in order to share their experience with friends and families, and iii) visitors do not share emotions “virtually” (e.g., facebook or twitter) during the visit. Guided by these results we developed a potential solution through which sharing can be facilitated. It includes various ways to bookmark or “save” and share artifacts during the visit, catering different types of visitors. It also includes a way for people at home to consume the shared content.

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.

The distinct abilities of older adults to interact with comput- ers has motivated a wide range of contributions in the the form of design guidelines for making technologies usable and accessible for the elderly population. However, despite the growing effort by the research community, the adoption of guidelines by developers and designers has been scant or not properly translated into more accessible interaction systems. In this paper we explore this issue by reporting on a qual- itative outcomes of a systematic review of 204 research- derived design guidelines for touchscreen applications. We report first on the different definitions of “elderly" and assess the reliability, organization and accessibility of the guidelines. Then we present our early attempt at facilitating the reporting and access of such guidelines to researchers and practitioners.

Social isolation and loneliness have a strong negative impact on health and happiness. The correlation is present at all ages, but the risk of loneliness and isolation is particularly high in later life and when transitioning to residential care settings, where keeping in touch with the family, making new friends and integrating with the community in a new social context can be very challenging. In this note we report on our preliminary studies on the opportunity and feasibility of using custom, printed magazines for increasing feelings of connectedness and promoting meaningful interactions in nursing homes. The content and layout for the magazine are generated in an automatic or semi-automatic way and emphasize aspects that could lead to discovering connections or starting conversations. Initial findings point to the potential for such a magazine and lead to content guidelines that we elaborate in the paper.

In this paper we describe the design of a reminiscence-based social interaction tool, namely Collegamenti, that aims at stimulating conversations and a sense of mutual awareness in residential care. Unlike previous work, Collegamenti focuses on stimulating the different types of relationships that are relevant to the quality of life in residential care: interactions with primary family caregivers, contacts with the larger family, friendships with peer residents and interactions with the nursing home staff. We explore the needs and challenges of this scenario in terms of social interactions but also in terms of how to make the technology sustainable and well integrated with care practices and initiatives, and report on the findings from the qualitative studies and concept validation.

In this paper we draw attention to the challenges of managing software projects for vulnerable populations, i.e., people potentially exposed to harm or not capable of protecting their own interests. The focus on human aspects, and particularly, the inclusion of human-centered approaches, has been a popular topic in the software engineering community. We argue, however, that current literature provides little understanding and guidance on how to approach these type of scenarios. Here, we shed some light on the topic by reporting on our experiences in developing innovative solutions for the residential care scenario, outlining potential issues and recommendations.

In this paper we explore the feasibility and design challenges in supporting co-located and virtual social interactions in residential care by building on the practice of reminiscence. Motivated by the challenges of social interaction in this context, we first explore the feasibility of a reminiscence-based social interaction tool designed to stimulate conversation in residential care with different stakeholders. Then, we explore the design challenges in supporting an assisting role in co-located reminiscence sessions, by running pilot studies with a technology probe. Our findings point to the feasibility of the tool and the willingness of stakeholders to contribute in the process, although with some skepticism about virtual interactions. The reminiscence sessions showed that compromises are needed when designing for both story collection and conversation stimulation, evidencing specific design areas where further exploration is needed.

Friendships and social interactions are renown contributors to wellbeing. As such, keeping a healthy amount of relationships becomes very important as people age and the size of their social network tends to decrease. In this paper, we take a step back and explore reconnection –find out about or re-contact old friends, an emerging topic due to the increased use of computer-mediated technology by older adults to maintain friendships and form new ones. We report on our findings from semi-structured interviews with 28 individuals from Costa Rica and Poland. The interviews aimed to explore whether there is a wish to reconnect, and the challenges encountered by older adults to reconnect. We contribute with design considerations for tools allowing older adults to reconnect, discussing opportunities for technology.

The goal of this paper is to understand if older adults can participate in remote museum visits with virtual environments, and which design factors would be crucial for remote participation system success. We report on a study with 30 older adult participants, identifying strong and weak points of different designs for remote participation and identifying future design directions. Our results illustrate that different designs can change communication dynamics, exploration and navi- gation patterns, and we describe the design features that led to this. An interaction-free design was found to be the easiest to use, while virtual environments are perceived as aesthetically appealing. Implications for developers are discussed.

The distinct abilities of older adults to interact with touchscreen devices have motivated a wide range of contributions in the form of design guidelines, which aim at informing the design for the aging population. However, despite the growing effort by the research community, many challenges still remain in translating these research findings into actionable design guidelines, with reports hinting scant adoption or implementation issues, which ultimately hurt the development of more accessible interactive systems. In this systematic literature review, we look at the research-derived design guidelines that set the foundation for design guideline compilations and standards, analyzing the aforementioned issues from the perspective of experts trying to discover, classify, and evaluate the work on the area of touchscreen design guidelines for older adults. The review analyses 52 research articles resulting in 434 research-derived design guidelines for touchscreen applications. These guidelines are analyzed using a taxonomy that considered the older adults ability evolution and the design aspects that are the target of the recommendations. The results point to the use of different definition of older adults, which go as early as 55+, with the design of displays and interaction styles to accommodate to vision and dexterity declines as the most prominent areas of research. However, proposed guidelines and recommendations were validated in only 15% of articles analyzed. The analysis also revealed that identifying guidelines and characterizing their focus in terms of ability declines and design aspects addressed is a demanding activity and prone to error, given the quality of reporting and details offered in research articles.

Previous work has focused on designing and evaluating information communication technology (ICT) tools for improving the coordination, organization of care practices, and to a less extent, the mediation of care communication among various involved actors. Our work contributes to addressing this gap with a specific emphasis on aged care, exploring communication practices, related challenges and design principles that should guide the design of technology-mediated information sharing. We do this by conducting three sets of user studies iterating on design mockups of increasing fidelity, through semi-structured interviews and workshops with nursing home (NH) staff and residents’ family members in four Italian nursing homes. The qualitative and quantitative results point to the potential of computer-mediated information sharing in this context, and to the importance (and challenges) of tailoring information and presentation to people’s needs and traits, and assisting care professionals in managing the information flow and proper communication.

This paper reports on the challenges and lessons we learned while running controlled experiments in crowdsourcing platforms. Crowdsourcing is becoming an attractive technique to engage a diverse and large pool of subjects in experimental research, allowing researchers to achieve levels of scale and completion times that would otherwise not be feasible in lab settings. However, the scale and flexibility comes at the cost of multiple and sometimes unknown sources of bias and confounding factors that arise from technical limitations of crowdsourcing platforms and from the challenges of running controlled experiments in the “wild”. In this paper, we take our experience in running systematic evaluations of task design as a motivating example to explore, describe, and quantify the potential impact of running uncontrolled crowdsourcing experiments and derive possible coping strategies. Among the challenges identified, we can mention sampling bias, controlling the assignment of subjects to experimental conditions, learning effects, and reliability of crowdsourcing results. According to our empirical studies, the impact of potential biases and confounding factors can amount to a 38% loss in the utility of the data collected in uncontrolled settings; and it can significantly change the outcome of experiments. These issues ultimately inspired us to implement CrowdHub, a system that sits on top of major crowdsourcing platforms and allows researchers and practitioners to run controlled crowdsourcing projects.

Crowdsourcing is being increasingly adopted as a platform to run studies with human subjects. Running a crowdsourcing experiment involves several choices and strategies to successfully port an experimental design into an otherwise uncontrolled research environment, e.g., sampling crowd workers, mapping experimental conditions to micro-tasks, or ensure quality contributions. While several guidelines inform researchers in these choices, guidance of how and what to report from crowdsourcing experiments has been largely overlooked. If under-reported, implementation choices constitute variability sources that can affect the experiment’s reproducibility and prevent a fair assessment of research outcomes. In this paper, we examine the current state of reporting of crowdsourcing experiments and offer guidance to address associated reporting issues. We start by identifying sensible implementation choices, relying on existing literature and interviews with experts, to then extensively analyze the reporting of 171 crowdsourcing experiments. Informed by this process, we propose a checklist for reporting crowdsourcing experiments.

Conversational AI is changing the way we interact with digital services. However, there is still a lack of conversational paradigms facilitating access to the Web. This paper discusses a new approach for Conversational Web Browsing, and introduces a design space identified through a user-centered process that involved 26 blind and visually impaired users. The paper also illustrates the conceptual architecture of a software framework that can automatically generate conversational agents for the Conversational Web.

Conversational AI is disrupting the way information is accessed. However, there is still a lack of conversational technologies leveraging the Web. This paper introduces an approach to support the notion of Conversational Web Browsing. It illustrates design patterns for navigating websites through conversation and shows how such patterns are sustained by a Web architecture that integrates NLP technologies.

In this paper we describe the design and development of a route training system for individuals with cognitive impairments (CIs) living in residential care facilities. Learning to move autonomously in public spaces is a fundamental skill for people with CI, who face several challenges to independently and safely move around. Yet, exploring opportunities for route training support, especially in residential settings, has received very little attention. To explore these opportunities, we followed a design and development process based on inclusive design practices that considered the organisational context and aimed at involving people with CI in the software design. To ensure our solution addressed the identified needs and abilities of this heterogeneous population, we further framed the route training definition as a design process that is enacted by the system, making the trainer and user co-creators of a personalised training. In this paper we report on the needs and challenges for mobility training in residential settings, introduce the design and formative evaluation of the route training system, to conclude with reflections and considerations on our methodological approach.

Conversational agents are emerging as channels for a natural and accessible interaction with digital services. Their benefits span across a wide range of usage scenarios and address visual impairments and any situational impairments that may take advantage of voice-based interactions. A few works highlighted the potential and the feasibility of adopting conversational agents for making the Web truly accessible for everyone. Yet, there is still a lack of concrete guidance in designing conversational experiences for browsing the Web. This paper illustrates a human-centered process that involved 26 blind and visually impaired people to investigate their difficulties when using assistive technology for accessing the Web, and their attitudes and preferences on adopting conversational agents. In response to the identified challenges, the paper introduces patterns for conversational Web browsing. It also discusses design implications that can promote Conversational AI as a technology to enhance Web accessibility.

Early-stage researchers (ESRs) are often challenged to learn research skills with sufficient support from a small circle of advisors and colleagues. Meanwhile, emerging socio-technical systems (STSs) are now available for social interactions among the general public and people in particular interest topics, such as research. However, how STSs can effectively support ESRs in developing research skills is not yet well understood. In this paper, we report on a series of interviews and surveys with ESRs. We found that online research communities held the potentials for ESRs to learn from diverse perspectives and experience. But the adoption of research communities for learning was still limited. We identified unmet needs in the design of these systems limiting the adoption. We then provide design implications for future STSs to support learning research skills with socio-technical affordances.

Effective feedback is crucial for early-stage researchers (ESRs) to develop their research skills. While feedback from supervisors and colleagues is important, additional feedback from external helpers can be beneficial. However, obtaining diverse and high-quality feedback outside of a research group can be challenging. In this work, we designed and prototyped Rsourcer, a crowdsourcing-based pipeline that simplifies the process of requesting, offering, evaluating, and adopting feedback. We evaluated Rsourcer with a concept validation study and a pilot study, which showed its potential. This work contributes with insights into crowdsourcing support with social technologies and extends research on scaling support for skills development.

Feedback on research artefacts from people beyond local research groups, such as researchers in online research communities, has the potential to bring in additional support for early-stage researchers and complementary viewpoints to research projects. While current literature has focused primarily on early-stage research seeking or getting support for research skills development in general, less is known about, more specifically, empirical understanding of how early-stage researchers exchange feedback with external researchers. In this paper, we focus on understanding the critical types of external feedback that early-stage researchers desire and the prevalent challenges they face with exchanging feedback with external helpers. We report on a large-scale survey conducted with early-stage researchers of diverse backgrounds. Our findings lay the empirical foundation for informing the designing of socio-technical systems for research feedback exchange.