We are excited to announce the publication of our latest research paper in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. The study, titled "Enhancing smart home interaction through multimodal command disambiguation," and conducted by me and Luigi De Russis, explores an innovative approach to making smart homes more intuitive and responsive to user commands.
On June 26, I presented the work "Empowering Users: End User Development for Mobile Applications Privacy Management" at the first International Workshop on Trusted Computing and Artificial Intelligence applied to Cybersecurity, held in Paris.
Smartphones have become integral to everyday life, offering numerous benefits but also raising significant privacy and security concerns. Users often face challenges managing app permissions and protecting personal data due to the complexity of existing smartphone operating system settings. Our research addresses these issues by introducing Privacy Manager, a mobile application designed for Android devices that employs an End-User Development (EUD) approach.
On June 2024, 2024, Luigi De Russis joined (online) the closing and awards ceremony at the Intelligent Environments (IE) 2024 conference to receive the Most Influential Paper Award for the 2018 paper entitled "'Hey Siri, do you understand me?': Virtual Assistants and Dysarthria".
On June 4-7, 2024, the e-Lite group will attend (in person) the 17th International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2024) in Arenzano, Italy.
The group will organize a workshop entitled "Digital Wellbeing for Teens: Designing Educational Systems (DIGI-Teens 2024)" in the morning of Tuesday, 4 June as part of a PRIN 2022 research project. Luigi De Russis, Alberto Monge Roffarello, Luca Scibetta e Massimiliano Pellegrino will join the workshop (and the entire conference).
Massimiliano Pellegrino will present the short paper "Digital Wellbeing Lens: Design Interfaces That Respect User Attention" on Friday, 7 June at 12:00 (session: Design).
People nowadays have access to Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCTs) that can help them manage their technology use. These tools offer features such as timers and the ability to disable distracting functionalities like recommendations and newsfeeds. However, researchers have identified several limitations with existing DSCTs, ranging from theoretical gaps to an overreliance on users' self-monitoring abilities.
In our work, we tried to overcome such limits and effectively support people in regaining control over smartphone use in the long term, focusing on teaching users how to relate better with technology, so that they can break unwanted smartphone habits and establish alternative behaviors without being forced to use a supportive tool forever.
Specifically, we designed, implemented, and evaluated StepByStep, a novel mobile DSCT that proactively assists users in learning how to regulate smartphone use.
By monitoring user's behavior, the app suggests new personalized learning paths composed of adaptable and continuously variable interventions to reduce and change unwanted behaviors with the smartphone. These paths can be at phone or app-level, and may be used to shape different behaviors, from avoiding using the smartphone in specific circumstances to using an app for an established amount of time. The main idea behind a learning path, in particular, is to progressively reduce the degree of support of the tool - i.e., the intensity of the associated intervention - based on user's achievements, until the user acquires a sufficient level of independence, i.e., it is able to sustain the new behavior without the help of the tool. To this end, StepByStep follows a gamification approach through which the intensity of an intervention is divided into four different levels. Users can gain points and advance in levels, i.e., by receiving less support, if they consistently respect the intervention with its current intensity for a sufficient amount of time. However, they can also lose points and downgrade to previous levels, i.e., by receiving more support, if they consistently fail to respect the intervention with its current intensity.
Luca Mannella has recently co-authored a new research article titled "Security at the Edge for Resource-Limited IoT Devices", in the special issue "Emerging IoT Technologies for Smart Environments, 3rd Edition" of MDPI Sensors. This research is a collaborative effort with Daniele Canavese (Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse), Leonardo Regano (Università degli Studi di Cagliari), and Cataldo Basile (TORSEC research group, DAUIN, Politecnico di Torino).
The proliferation of IoT devices (14.4 billion active endpoints at the end of 2022) has introduced security vulnerabilities stemming from limited computing power, absence of timely security updates, and intrinsic design flaws. This paper aims to improve the security of IoT devices presenting the IoT Proxy, a modular component crafted to enhance security in resource-limited IoT scenarios. At its core, the IoT Proxy is crafted to externalize security-related functions from IoT devices, mitigating limitations arising from constrained computing power. This is achieved through a secure network gateway equipped with diverse Virtual Network Security Functions (VNSFs), allowing for adaptability and scalability.
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).
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.