Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Better Bioinformatics Through Usability Analysis (Just Published!)

My paper on usability and bioinformatics has just been published today on "Bioinformatics", as advance online access.
Full PDF freely available online here

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage - Online Program

I participate as an instructor in this exciting new online program
of the University of Lugano (Switzerland), in Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage :::::>>>>

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The tension between Content and Interaction

CNN is showcasing an advanced touch-screen-based interactive technology to demonstrate the flowing of electorial votes for the US elections...
is it all about interaction? What about content and communication?
Watch the 2 videos




The parody >>>

http://tshwi.blogspot.com/2008/10/snls-multi-touch-parody-of-cnns.html

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

IDC 2009 - The 8th International Conference on Interaction Design for Children

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

IDC 2009 - The 8th International Conference on Interaction Design for Children In cooperation with ACM-SIGCHI

Politecnico di Milano - Como Campus, Como, Italy June 3-5, 2009


For young people today, technology is pervasive in many aspects of life. From childhood onwards, they learn and play using computers and other technological devices; as they grow, they build and maintain friendships using computers and mobile phones; they interact with one another virtually; and even find critical interpersonal support and therapy using computers, the web, and other technology-enhanced artifacts.
>> Conference details and CALL FOR PAPERS

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Aware Home, a talk by Wendy Rogers at IUPUI

Last Thursday (OCtober 9, 2008) I had the honor to be the faculty host of Wendy Rogers (>>>) from Georgia Tech, who gave an insightful and enjoyable talk about the AWARE HOME - Technology To Support Aging In Place.
Supporting successfull aging with usable and useful technologies is a very relevant topic, which will be more and more urgent as the elderly population grows. I found the idea of buidling a real "home" to deploy, test, and experiment technologies "in context" is also a brilliant strategy to approach the problem.

Here is what is about...(from talk abstract)
"Imagine your home is “aware” of your activities so that it can help you remember why you went into the kitchen, whether you know the visitor at the front door, or even how to perform a recently learned home medical procedure. An aware home is not science fiction – it is within the reach of current science. It can help older adults maintain their independence, help parents caring for children with disabilities, and help those recovering from illness or injury. Maintaining functional independence is a high priority for many older adults, and remaining in their homes can be key to this independence. An aware home can provide support in numerous ways including alerting the person to an emergency or hazardous situation (e.g., a stove left on), providing information about trends in daily activities (e.g., reduced movements), providing support for daily activities such as medication monitoring or use of medical technologies, and also supporting social communication with family and friends. An innovative research program at Georgia Institute of Technology is developing psychological and computer science approaches to support home activities.

>>. To know more, visit the Human Factors and Aging Lab at Georgia Tech

The talk was part of the IUPUI School of Informatics Colloquia Series.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Indiana Univ. School of Informatics among “Top IT Schools to Watch 2008” by Computerworld magazine

Specialized degrees showcase an interdisciplinary plan.

August 18, 2008 (Computerworld) It's difficult to imagine any industry these days where IT doesn't play some kind of role as a business enabler. And while many graduate IT programs provide students with real-world IT experiences either through case-study assignments, capstone projects or internships, few if any schools can tout the kind of interdisciplinary approach that Indiana University's School of Informatics has taken. READ ON >>>

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

I've just joined Indiana University as a new faculty member

I'm happy to join Indiana University, School of Informatics at IUPUI as a new Assistant Professor --- see the website announcement >>>>

Thursday, June 26, 2008

"Web Engineer" position, University of Lugano (Switzerland)

The University of Lugano (Switzerland), Web Service, is seeking to fill a full time "Web Engineer/Web Developer" staff position.
The post is in Italian: http://www.unisi.ch/bando-servizioweb-30481.pdf
Fluency in Italian is preferred.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A research on "Player Engagement"

A friend and colleague of mine - Luca Botturi - at SUNY Potsdam invites to participate in this research on understanding the engagement in gameplay. Try out the game and answer a few questios about your game experience :::: >>>> Enjoy!!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Travelling and the User Experience...

Reading this latest Jakob Nielsen's alert box, I bumped into an interesting well-written NYT article on the burden and pain "tall" travellers typically suffer in their journeys, and discovered also this interesting "seat comparison" site providing some help...

Monday, June 16, 2008

M308: Week 6: Accessibility

Welcome video message to the participants of the TEC-CH DAS Online Program in Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural heritage (Usability course M308, Week on Accessibility). Instructor: Dr. Davide Bolchini

Monday, June 09, 2008

TEC-CH DAS M308 - Welcome to the 5th week

Introductory welcome message to the participants of 5th week of the online module on "Usability of Digital Interactive Applications", within the Online Diploma of Advanced studies in Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage (http://www.tec-ch-online.unisi.ch/).

Monday, June 02, 2008

TEC-CH DAS M308 - Welcome to the 4th Week

Introducing the 4th week of the module: carrying out a sample inspection with MILE+

Friday, May 30, 2008

"Flow" and the User Experience

While reading the book "Interaction Design" by Sharp, Preece, Rogers, I found quoted the work of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi on the concept of "flow" as a driver for understanding the user experience in sites (or in specific kinds of sites).
Here's the original interview (back in 1996) of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi on wired.com
>>>> According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, great Web sites are not about navigating content, but staging experience ...read on >>>

Welcome to the Weekend Web



>>>>>> (from BusinessWeek) During the week, Americans run Google and Yahoo searches at work and compose blogs on MySpace and Facebook. The PC Web's fastest-growing site categories include pharmacies, food, cosmetics, and job search, according to comScore. During weekends, we fire up our smartphones for fun. The fastest-growing mobile-Web categories relate to weather, entertainment, games, and music, according to comScore. Read on >>>>>

No cash in sight for Web 2.0 (from Financial Times)

A year on, the much-talked of “widget economy” has failed to take off. >>>>>

The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. >>>>>

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Davide's Seminar at City University (London) on Usability and Bioinformatics

On May 2, 2008, I have been hosted by Prof. Neil Maiden at the Centre for HCI Design at City University, London, to give a talk on my current research on usability issues and redesigns for bioinformatics web applications.
Here you can enjoy the slides of the talk:

Stanford class on exploring persuasive applications for Facebook

I recently received the newsletter from BJ Fogg from the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, and I discovered they had an interesting class with students designing applications for Facebook, as a way to explore ans study the potential of persuasive technologies in social network environment... >>>>>

Further interesting collection of docs on Persuasive Technologies from the lab:
>>>>

Persuasive Technology Conference 2008

The Third International Conference on Persuasive Technology
PERSUASIVE 2008
June 4-6, 2008 -- Oulu, Finland
www.persuasive2008.org

Opening Wednesday June 4, 2008 at 8:30 AM at Hotel Lasaretti. Register at www.persuasive2008.org.

Persuasive Technology 2008 will gather people interested in how software and related technologies influence people's attitudes and behaviours.

This conference will also feature the best new insights into how web sites, video games, and mobile phones and other applications can be designed to motivate and persuade people.

The conference will highlight new knowledge in the understanding and designing of persuasive technology. The event will bring together researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals interested in this important new field.

Example topics:
– Well-being and health behaviour
– Motivational technology
– Smart environments
– Persuasive games
– Web2.0
– Social networks
– Mobile persuasion
– Ethics and methodology
– Self-persuasion and timing
– Knowledge and organization
– Theory for persuasive technology


Keynote Speakers
Prof. Ian Bogost
Dr. BJ Fogg
Prof. Kristina Höök

General Chair
Prof. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
University of Oulu

Associate Chair
Prof. Per Hasle
University of Aalborg

General information
www.persuasive2008.org

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

WWW 2008 Conference Proceedings ONLINE!



>>> The full set of papers of the International ACM World Wide Web Conference 2008 is now available and freely accessibile online >>>>

I look forward to see the practice of open, free online proceedings more and more spread among the scientific communities. I think it is a very good strategy to disseminate easily and more broadly the knowledge shared within the academic community.

>>> OUR Paper on "Value-Driven Design for Infosuasive Web Applications" is also published in the proceedings and freely accessible >>>

Usability and Persuasion: Seducible Moments in the User Experience

Although a bit old, I sometimes go back and read through this fascinating article by Jared Spool, which introduces the notion "Seducible Moments" as those situation or design locations where designers have more chances to persuade the users about a change of behavior or attitude, with some salient examples... >>>>

How Little Do Users Read? (recent gem from Nielsen's alert box)

>>> Nielsen reports and enriches the findings of a recent ethnographic research which found how little users actually read text-based web pages....>>>

Friday, May 16, 2008

A giant leap into Web 3.0 (NY Financial Times)

New Perspectives on the evolution of the web. Digital Business’s online offering is about to leapfrog from a very static Web 1.0 format straight over Web 2.0 and land firmly in Web 3.0. >>>

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Extremely Agile VideoBlogging (for teaching)

To efficiently and easily produce and publish a short video for teaching-support purposes (for example, to answer a student's question from remote, or for clarifying a difficult concept), I typically go through the following light-weight process:

needed tools:
a) a working webcam
b) an account on www.hipcast.com

1. prepare your flow of thought, and - if necessary - readable paper sketches as support
2. log in to hipcast, turn on your webcam and start recording "online" your video
3. review and save your video
4. publish it through hipcast by sending it to your blog (e.g. on blogger)
5. if you want to have it visible on your blog, fine. Otherwise, if you want to use it as "mesh-up" anywhere else, copy from the blog post the generated code and paste it in the place to want to embed it (in a forum, or in a webpage or in a HTML mail message that you can send to your students).
6. the job is done! wait for your students' feedback.

Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool - Public Launch, NOW Online!

Yesterday night at 7 pm in the very fine artistic and noble setting of the Chandos House in central London, CancerBackup and MacMillan - large and important UK charities active in cancer support - have presented the launch of OPERA (Online Personal Risk Assessment Tool), the first online instrument to enable a personal and tailored risk assessment of breast cancer.
We enjoyed the event very much, and we are happy to see a great support from the people active in the cancer support field.

The development of OPERA has been funded by CancerBackUp, and design and realized by the TEC-Lab (our team!!!) and by the Institute of Health Communication of the University of Lugano.

Our teams in Lugano have done a great job!

OPERA is officially online starting from today, and it is now accessible to the general public for use.
OPERA is accessible from the MacMillan website and
from CancerBackup website .
We hope for further development of OPERA for other types of cancer risk assessment and for widespread usage.

>>>> Try OPERA yourself here >>>>>

Monday, April 21, 2008

Videoblogging for teaching and learning: my initial experience

I'm having a great deal of fun and excitement in experimenting the potential of videoblogging for professional purposes.
In particular, I have discovered in my own experience how easy and straightfoward is to publish homemade videos (YouTube had already taught us that, somehow), even when these videos might serve professional purposes, such as teaching and (formal or informal) learning.

Here is one of my latest experiences:
A master student sent me an email asking to clarify a technical issue on information architecture, to solve a design problem in his own design project. Instead of spending a great deal of time and energy in writing down the technical solutions, or editing a navigation scheme with the proper tools, I decided to send him a VIDEO ANSWER, which consisted in a 3 minutes video illustration of the proposed solution, with me talking over the shooting of a home-made paper sketch.
Efficiency for the instructor: preparing, shooting, (no editing), publishing a 3 minutes video took me 20 minutes (surely much less than a traditional technical email and subsequent asnwers for further clarification).
Learning reward for the student: the student wrote me the next days with an enthusiastic replay, thanking me for the clear and complete answer to the issue: he found the explanation helpful and illuminating to solve his problem.


On the basis of my limited experience, I am more and more convinced that:
* short videos can be very effective for explaining complex concepts (in brief) or for giving the big picture (setting connection). They may be effective for technical solutions (although more difficult) only with other kind of support (paper drawing, sketches, etc.) - see the experience of SciVee as example.
* the professional quality of the videos is not a necessary precondition for the effective communication of the message. Even "office-made" quality (SHORT - 2-3 mins) video can get the message through, as long as the student is committed and motivated to understand the content.
* videos make the communication with the students more lively and human - no doubt about that
* the effort for the teacher is minimum, with respect to traditional way of answering issues
* the learning effectiveness can be high, if content is relevant and well explained.

I'm eager to establish more short video-like material for our traditional and especially online courses, such as forums to post video-answers for the students's questions.

For shooting and publishing videos at low cost, I am finding HIPCAST a very useful online toolkit.

Lugano Communication Forum 2008

>>> Comunicazione, Sanità, Ambiente e Tecnologie: Idee forti per un Ticino forte al Lugano Communication Forum 2008 >>>

Friday, March 28, 2008

Open-ended goals in scenario-based usability

Scenario-based usability inspection can be enriched by considering ill-defined, open-ended user goals which can put the application to test.

Two evaluation perspectives on usability analysis

The usability evaluation of a multimedia interactive application can be tackled along two main complementary perspective: a domain-dependent approach (focussing on the specific requirements of the application), and a domain-independent approach, looking at the quality of those design characteristics which can be evaluated independently by the specific domain knowledge and scenarios.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Davide at The Open University - UK

On Tuesday last week I had the opportunity to visit The Open University in Milton Keynes (1 hour north of London)
to give a talk on my current research about usability and bioinformatics.

Talk abstract >>>

My visit was hosted by Prof. Bashar Nuseibeh, at the Department of Computing.

I enjoyed the company of the colleagues and interesting discussion during the talk.
Then, Bashar kindly took me to visit other parts of the Open campus,
and particularly the Knowledge Media Institute, a highly innovative research centre
in new technologies for education, communication and knowledge management.

Storytelling design for Mechatronic at TEC-Lab

My colleagues at the TEC-lab at the University of Lugano
have just designed a storytelling web application
for an industrial customer: Mechatronic.

You can access the website at:
http://www.mechatronic.unisi.ch/


The application development exploits an effective and usable storytelling design pattern and content management system developed at University of Lugano and Politecnico di Milano.

SIG DOC 2008 - ACM Design of Communication

==================================================================
26th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC 2008)

September. 22-24, 2008.

Lisbon, Portugal

http://sigdoc2008.net

Submission deadline: May 2, 2008

==================================================================================================

Social Bookmarking in plain English - from CommonCraft.com



>> Both the content and the communication format are very interesting...

Video micro-learning - "paperworks" from CommonCraft.com

I have just discovered this short-video factory, whose art is communicating "complex ideas" in plain terms through paper-based videos.

Worth seeing >>>

New Media Communication for Cultural Heritage Professionals

The University of Lugano prepares the launch of a new distance-based educational programme.
TEC-CH Online (Online Diploma of Advanced Studies in Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage) addresses practitioners and/or graduates in the heritage field who wish to advance their career, to develop a specialization, or to redirect their professional orientation. The programme offers knowledge and skills in communication for cultural projects by means of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

>>> In the pre-opening phase of the TEC-CH Online programme, an array of six courses is offered as free trial.

Friday, February 22, 2008

30 minutes multimedia tutorials on designing for usability (in Italian)

For the occasion of the publishing of our report on the quality of eGovernment in Switzerland (see details), I find worthwhile recalling that, in the context of a project aimed at raising the skills and the awareness on user-centered design in the Italian public administration, Lorenzo Cantoni and I have designed and developed 2 multimedia tutorials (requiring 30' study effort each), one on "designing for usability" and one on "evaluating usability", with specific examples for public administration website project managers, web masters and designers.
The tutorials are in italian and freely accessible:

>>> Designing for Usability

>>> Evaluating Usability

The tutorials frame usability and user experience design in the context of web communication and requirements understanding.

The Quality of eGovernment in Switzerland - New Report Published!

The TEC-Lab at the University of Lugano has just published a report (in italian, french and german) about the status of the eGovernment in Switzerland, particularly from a communication and usability perspective.
I have prepared the final report, which extracts the key finding of 3 studies which have been recently conducted by research centers in Switzerland to assess the quality of eGovernment in terms of citizens' satisfaction, information and servide offer, and future development.

Report online and Press Release >>>>>>>

Herman Hesse Storytelling Series - by TEC-Lab, University of Lugano and Politecnico di Milano

>>>> Storytelling about Herman Hesse - just publihsed (in italian): Alla Ricerca della Verità

La serie editoriale Hermann Hesse è sviluppata in collaborazione tra l’Università della Svizzera italiana (TEC-Lab), il Politecnico di Milano (HOC-Lab) e la Fondazione Hermann Hesse Montagnola. L’obiettivo principale di queste narrazioni è di diffondere la cultura del Museo Hermann Hesse, in un modo sia informativo che di intrattenimento.

La serie comprende delle narrazioni su temi generali legati alla vita di Hesse e alla sua opera creativa, in connessione alle mostre che verranno organizzate presso il Museo Hermann Hesse a Montagnola (Collina d’Oro). Il formato narrativo consiste in una serie di “storie” che presentano i vari temi dell’argomento prescelto. In ogni storia, una narrazione audio è accompagnata da immagini evocative. Questo formato consente di conoscere l’argomento prescelto in un modo rilassato, grazie all’ascolto della narrazione audio e al susseguirsi delle immagini.
Per chi volesse saperne di più, è possibile accedere a un livello più approfondito di informazioni.

Grazie alla tecnologia resa disponibile al TEC-Lab dal Politecnico di Milano, ogni titolo sarà fruibile come sito web, un numero di files iPod e un CD-ROM. Questo formato è già stato implementato con successo in varie altre applicazioni prodotte dal TEC-Lab e dal Laboratorio HOC (alcuni esempi sono disponibili in rete sul sito www.policultura.it/beniculturali.htm).

>>>> Storytelling about Herman Hesse - just publihsed (in italian): Alla Ricerca della Verità

ACM ICD'08 Workshop on Marginalized Young People: Inclusion Through ICT




INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP CALL FOR PAPERS
"MARGINALIZED YOUNG PEOPLE: INCLUSION THROUGH ICT"
held at
ACM IDC 2008 - Interaction Design and Children, Chicago - USA, June 11-13, 2008

For more information on the workshop >>>
For more information on ACM IDC 2008 >>>>

Poverty, not belonging to the mainstream culture and language, lack of
competences, and lack of motivation are some of the main factors for
exclusion of young people from full participation in Western societies. As
several empirical studies show, all young people tend to use digital
technologies increasingly, but big differences exist in how they are using
digital media. At the individual level and, more and more, at the social
level, many young people today live in both worlds: the physical world, and
the virtual world that ICT makes accessible “anytime, anywhere”. As this
trend continues, It becomes crucial to explore these new kind of digital
divide that is arising among young generations, which does not result from
having no or limited access to ICT, but is produced by remaining only a
user vs. becoming a critical actor who can exploit virtual experiences in
order to increase his or her cultural, social and even economic capital.

The workshop aims at bringing together technologists, empirical
researchers, designers, educators, sociologists, or decision-makers in any
domain involving young people, to explore together some of the following
issues.
· What are main factors of exclusion from positive participation in
Digital Media activities?
· How can ICT solutions and learning environments for inclusion
look like?
· What success stories/best practices can be told about positive
impacts of ICT in these young people’s lives?

A selection of the best papers from the workshop will be published in the
ACM IDC’08 proceedings and at the ACM digital library, and will be
presented during the main conference.

SUBMISSION
Workshop position papers submission should be made electronically in PDF
format, and may be up to 4 pages formatted according to the anonymous
extended
abstract template
Position papers should be submitted not later than 3 March 2008 (6:00pm
PST) directly to workshop organizers:
Franca Garzotto (Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy) Heidi Schelhowe (Universität Bremen, Germany)

ORGANIZERS
Prof. Franca Garzotto (contact person)
HOC - Hypermedia Open Center, Department of Electronics and Information,
and School of Industrial Design, Politecnico di Milano, Milan (Italy) garzotto@elet.polimi.it
Prof. Dr. Heidi Schelhowe
DiMeB: Digital Media in Education, Center for Computing Technologies
(TZI)Informatik, University of Bremen, Bremen (Germany) schelhow@informatik.uni-bremen.de

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Davide Bolchini, University College London, UK
Antonella De Angeli, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom Nicoletta Di Blas, Politecnico di Milano Françoise Decortis, University of Liège Tal Drori, Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel Piero Fraternali, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Kaj Grønbæk, University of AArhus, Denmark Barry Harper, University of Wollongong, Australia Ole Iversen University of Aarhus, Denmark Rosa Lanzilotti, University of Bari (Italy) Fabio Paterno’, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy Caterina Poggi, University of Wisconsin, USA Simos Retalis, University of Piraeus, Greece Thomas C. Reeves, University of Georgia, USA Francesca Rosella, CuteCircuit, Stockholm, USA Gustavo Rossi, La Plata National University Argentina Elisa Rubegni, University of Lugano, Switzerland Mikael B. Skov, Aalborg University, Denmark Karsten Wolf, University of Bremen, Germany

Paper submitted to 2008 Hypertext Conference: "Investigating Success Factors for Hypermedia Development Tools"

We have just submitted a full paper to the Hypertext Conference 2008:

Paper abstract:


<< What are the key factors that contribute to the “success” of a hypermedia development tool? We have investigated this issue in the context of non ICT professional environments (e.g., schools or small museums), which have limited “in-house” technical competences and must cope with very limited budget. The paper discusses a set of success factors that can be relevant for hypermedia tools devoted to the above target, and presents a tool for multichannel hypermedia development that we designed in our lab having these factors in mind. We discuss the success of our system and report a wide empirical study in which the different success factors have been measured. >>
Paper by Davide Bolchini, Franca Garzotto, Paolo Paolini.

Article submitted to IEEE Requirements Engineering Conference: "Evaluating Communication Requirements"

We have just submitted a full paper to the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference about Evaluating Communication Requirements -
here is the abstract for the submitted paper:

<< As it is important to elicit communication requirements for systems (such as websites and multimedia applications) with persuasion goals towards its users, it is even more crucial to be able to assess at which degree the expected communication impact has been achieved. On the basis of previous work and successful experience in communication requirements analysis, this paper presents a method to evaluate the fulfilment of communication requirements of content-intensive multimedia applications. The evaluation method is based on a lightweight set of value-driven conceptual tools and on a straightforward process that involves both communication and requirements experts, as well as final end users. With respect to existing evaluation methods focusing on usability requirements, our approach targets the communication effect of the design on the user experience and considers a number of aspects that go beyond pure ease of use. The paper presents our method, discusses a real life project in which it has been adopted, and reports an empirical study that has been carried on to validate its quality. >>

Paper submitted by Davide Bolchini, Franca Garzotto, Paolo Paolini and Elisa Rubegni.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

SciVee.tv - Pioneering New Modes of Scientific Dissemination

An innovative way to share scientific research - by video-publishing papers (PubCasts) and researchers presenting their findings...a growing paradigm?
It seems promising so far and surely successfull in terms of exposure of a publsished scientific paper (look at the NUMBERS of views) or maybe for not yet published papers, or in its infancy).
http://www.scivee.tv/

TED - Ideas Worth Spreading: Incredibly Inspiring Talks from an annual unique conference



TED VIDEO talks are now available online at www.ted.com >>>>

from TED.com
<<
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

TED.com makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free.
>>

Thursday, January 24, 2008

2008 Horizon Project Report just published (by New Media Consortium)

The Horizon Project yearly publishes a report illustrating key state-of-the-art advances and trends in new media technologies, and their use for education, learning and creative thinking.

The report is full of interesting links to new tools and applications, as well as to experiences from universities and organizations worldwide.

The 2008 Horizon Report has just been published and is available on the New Media Consortium Website >>>>>>>

Hot topics are:
* video communication
* collaborative webs
* mesh-ups
* and much more.....

New article published:"Simple, Fast, Cheap: Success Factors for Interactive Multimedia Tools"

I just got one paper published on PsyhNology Journal, on low-cost multimedia development: Read the paper >>>>

Abstract:
This paper discusses key factors contributing to the “success” of interactive multimedia development tools in non ICT professional contexts.
We define “success” in terms of acceptability and large scale usage by entities and institutions who may need to build interactive multimedia artifacts but do not have technical competences “in-house” and must cope with very limited financial resources.
Schools or museums, for example, may want to exploit interactive multimedia for communication or educational purposes, but are bound to many resource-related constraints. In this perspective, we argue that simplicity, low-cost,
and ultra short “time-to-market” are key requirements for interactive multimedia development tools to be accepted and widely adopted by non ICT professionals.
To support his claim, we illustrate an exemplary tool that meets these requirements and was developed at our lab within the Policultura Project.
The tool was successfully used by cultural heritage experts in Italian small museums and by over 1300 students of 55 schools in Italy, and brought important educational and social benefits to all stakeholders involved.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Videos from our students in Lugano...studying new media and IDM....(videos are in italian)

Our undergraduate students at the University of Lugano post these nice videos
after the "hard-working" course of new media....

Facebook and Usability - by Jared Spool

Usability challenges and lessons learned at Facebook - told by Jared Spool from User Interface Engineering >>>

Design for “Infosuasive” Web Applications - paper to be presented at WWW2008 conference

We just got a paper accepted at the "World Wide Web 20008 International Conference".


Here is the paper abstract:

Value-Driven Design for “Infosuasive” Web Applications
Davide Bolchini, Franca Garzotto, Paolo Paolini

An infosuasive web application is mainly intended to be at the same time informative and persuasive, i.e., it aims at supporting knowledge needs and it has also the (declared or not declared) goal of influencing user’s opinions, attitudes and behaviors. Most web applications, in fact, are infosuasive (with the exception of those the aim of which is mainly operational).

In this paper, we investigate the complex set of elements that inform the very early design of infosuasive web applications. We propose a conceptual framework aimed at supporting the actors involved in this process (strategic decision makers, marketers, business managers, brand designers, communication designers, graphic designers, information architects, technology experts) to integrate their different viewpoints, to organize the variety of issues that need to be analyzed, to find a direction in the numerous design options, and to finally represent the results of this activity in an effective way.

Our approach is value-driven since it is centered around the concept of communication value, regarded as a vehicle to fulfill communication goals on specific communication targets. We place the analysis of these aspects in the wider context of web requirements analysis, highlighting their relationships with business values analysis and user needs analysis. We pinpoint how values and communication goals impact on various design dimensions of infosuasive web application - contents, information architecture, interaction, operations, and lay-out. Our approach is multidisciplinary, and was inspired by goal-based and value-based requirements engineering (often used in web engineering), to brand design (often used in marketing), and to value-centered design “frameworks” (as proposed by the HCI community). A case study exemplifies our methodological proposal, discussing a large project in which we are currently involved.





by the way, the conference features outstanding keynote speakers ("outstanding" at least by their title) >>>

Communications of the ACM - new! DIGITAL edition

browse the fully digital edition of CACM, in its new - magazine-like - design:
>>>>>>>>