On October 2, 2023, Politecnico di Torino's students will start the first semester in the new academic year. Welcome back!

Members of the e-Lite group teach various courses in the semester, some of them being elective. Such courses are offered in different bachelors' and masters' degrees. Courses' topics include web applications, databases, and human-computer interaction.

We invite students to familiarize themselves with the courses taught by group members and consider them for their choices. Continue to read for more details and useful links.

On September 6-8, 2023, the e-Lite group will attend (in person) the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT 2023) in Lisbon, Portugal. Alberto Monge Roffarello will present the regular paper "Nudging Users or Redesigning Interfaces? Evaluating Novel Strategies for Digital Wellbeing Through inControl" on Wednesday, 6 September at 13:30 (Session 2).

The 2023 edition of the Italian Symposium on Digital Education (ISYDE), organized by the Italian e-Learning Society (SIe-L), is planned in Reggio Emilia (Italy) on September 13-15. From the e-Lite group, Fulvio will participate in the special plenary session Blending strategies in universities: methods, technologies and policies, that focuses on the adoption of blending learning technologies on some major Italian universities.

On June 26-30, 2023, the e-Lite group participated (in person) in the 15th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2023) in Swansea, United Kingdom.

Our participation proved to be a fruitful engagement, full of insightful discussions, critical feedback, and opportunities for growth. Here, we discuss the responses to our presentations and the constructive criticism we have garnered for future improvements.

Juan Pablo Sáenz and Tommaso Calò each presented a paper, while Tommaso also discussed his doctoral research during the Doctoral Consortium.

The first paper introduces an innovative conversational agent that captures a developer's reasoning and motivations during the coding process. The second paper, on the other hand, presents a visual programming tool enabling the design, training, and evaluation of deep learning models without the need for specific programming languages. Tommaso Calò's Doctoral Consortium research discusses how AI can bring changes to human experiences during design and creative processes.

On June 21st, 2023, Luca Mannella presented the paper "A Gateway-based MUD Architecture to Enhance Smart Home Security" at SpliTech 2023 (The 8th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies).

The paper was presented during the Special Session on CyberSecurity and IoT, chaired by Luca. The special session was held within the International Symposium on Internet of Things.

On June 26-30, 2023, the e-Lite group will participate (in person) in the 15th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2023) in Swansea, United Kingdom.

Juan Pablo Saenz and Tommaso Calò will each present a paper, while Tommaso will also discuss his doctoral research during the Doctoral Consortium.

The first paper introduces an innovative conversational agent that captures a developer's reasoning and motivations during the coding process. The second paper, on the other hand, presents a visual programming tool enabling the design, training, and evaluation of deep learning models without the need for specific programming languages. Tommaso Calò's Doctoral Consortium research discusses how AI can bring changes to human experiences during design and creative processes.

From the 20th to the 23th of June, the e-Lite research group will participate to the 8th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech 2023). The conference will be held in Croatia, in Split, and in Bol (Brač island).

On the 21st of June, Luca Mannella will chair the Special Session on Cybersecurity and IoT within the The International Symposium on Internet of Things.

During the special session, Luca will also present his last paper, co-authored with Prof. Fulvio Corno, entitled: "A Gateway-based MUD Architecture to Enhance Smart Home Security".

The last few years have seen the flourishing of Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCTs) both in academia and as off-the-shelf products. These tools allow users to self-regulate their technology use. The two screenshots, for example, are taken from Apple Screen Time, an app available on every iOS smartphone. It allows users to monitor time spent and smartphone pickups, with the possibility of defining interventions like usage timers and lock-out mechanisms for specific applications.

While these emerging technologies for behavior change hold great promise to support people’s digital wellbeing, we still have a limited understanding of their real effectiveness, as well as of how to best design and evaluate them.

To close these gaps, we conducted a systematic literature review and a meta-analysis of current work on tools for digital self-control. Our analysis was published on the ACM Trasactions on Computer-Human Interaction, and surfaced motivations, strategies, design choices, and challenges that characterize the design, development, and evaluation of DSCTs.

On June 6-8, 2023, the e-Lite group will attend (in person) the 9th International Symposium on End-User Development (IS-EUD 2023) in Cagliari, Italy.

Alberto Monge Roffarello and Tommaso Calò will present two papers (one regular and one short) on June 7, while Luigi De Russis will chair the "Demo and Work-in-progress" session on June 8 (15:20-16:35).

The regular paper presents a voice-based approach to define trigger-action rules in smart environments. The short paper, instead, is on end-user website generators through Large Language Models (LLMs).

Luca Mannella had participated in the 2nd PitchD event organized by the IEEE Student Branch of Politecnico di Torino in 2023. The PitchD was scheduled for May 24, 2023, from 11:00 to 12:00, in the conference room Maxwell (fifth floor of the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications) at Politecnico di Torino.

Luca's 15-minute presentation, entitled "Securing the Connected Home: Extending the MUD Architecture for Smart Home Gateways", provided insights into the recent research activities conducted by the research group on the cybersecurity of IoT systems, with a specific focus on smart homes.