Matteo Zallio

University of Cambridge | Cam · Department of Engineering

Continuous changes in society and the need for sustainable development demand updates in designing better built environments to respond to the variety of user needs. Notwithstanding the growing interest of research and the introduction of guidelines and standards on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, there are still several limitation...

Immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and extended reality (XR) are rapidly evolving, presenting significant opportunities for enhancing user experiences. Nevertheless, their widespread adoption introduces substantial ethical challenges that necessitate thorough exploration. This research c...

The Metaverse, a transformation of the internet by XR-technologies progressively blending the digital and physical world, is already changing our social structures. The success of VR-headsets like Quest has made both virtual worlds and the “metaverse” ubiquitous. This technological evolution yields the potential to fundamentally change the way we c...

Inclusive Design has been widely promoted in the fields of product, engineering, and user experience design. Despite the educational efforts made by scientists, practitioners, and institutions to raise awareness about accessibility and inclusion, Inclusive Design has not been widely embraced in architectural design practice, where it is often assoc...

The design of the built environment strongly influences people’s needs, how they learn, behave, and build relationships. Education and learning are part of the nature of human beings, and allow them to develop skills, advance culture, and answer needs. In the current context, the incremental use of technological devices inside spaces has brought se...

The metaverse and digital, virtual environments have been part of recent history as places in which people can socialize, work and spend time playing games. However, the infancy of the development of these digital, virtual environments brings some challenges that are still not fully depicted. With this article, we seek to identify and map the curre...

This article outlines some of the major ethical and social questions raised by the birth and growth of digital, virtual environments and the metaverse. The metaverse, also known as a virtual digital space, is rapidly taking shape and forecasts from various analysts predict that this technology is going to generate a vast number of disruptive change...

The metaverse and digital, virtual environments have been part of recent history as places in which people can socialize, work and spend time playing games. However, the infancy of the development of these digital, virtual environments brings some challenges that are still not fully depicted. With this article, we seek to identify and map the curre...

Digital, virtual environments and the metaverse are rapidly taking shape and will generate disruptive changes in the areas of ethics, privacy, safety, and how the relationships between human beings will be developed. To uncover some of some of the implications that will impact those areas, this study investigates the perceptions of 101 younger peop...

The Metaverse, a digital immersive environment in which people interact by using immersive technologies, is shaping a new way that people interact and socialise. Forecasts predict that by 2026 a quarter of the population will spend at least an hour a day in the Metaverse. This projection requires the consideration of several challenges and opportun...

Standards are essential instruments to ensure the safety, efficiency and quality of products, services, systems, processes, and environments. In pre-pandemic times, the standard development process used to happen through in-person consultation and meetings, however, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the whole routine. A team of technical experts from...

This book chapter outlines different facets of Human-Centered Design, which evolved over half a century. These facets have different foundational influences that lead to design by, with, and for people. Designing for people, including Ergonomics and Human Factors and Interactions Design, originated from early developments in experimental psychology...

Standards are essential instruments to ensure the safety, efficiency and quality of products, services, systems, processes, and environments. In pre-pandemic times, standard development process used to happen through in-person consultation and meetings, however, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the whole routine. A team of technical experts from the...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a tremendous change in people’s behaviour, particularly with regard to direct contact with contaminated objects. Handy, a multipurpose tool to help prevent the spread of the virus, was designed as a response in 2020. Initially, it was shared as an open-source, 3D-printable device to allow contactless interaction with o...

Designing accessible and inclusive buildings is essential if they are to provide enjoyable and inspiring experiences for all their occupants. Research revealed that many architectural design professionals perceive a lack of awareness of the aspects to consider when designing to be a limiting factor in the uptake of Inclusive Design. By involving ex...

This work documents the rising acceptance of social robots for healthcare as well as their growing economic potential from 2017 to 2021. The comparison is based on two studies in the active assisted living (AAL) community. We first provide a brief overview of social robotics and a discussion of the economic potential of social health robots. We fou...

Notwithstanding the increased number of regulations there is a general lack of awareness about Inclusive Design among building industry professionals. This is partly due to the scarcity of available tools to evaluate occupancy feedback on inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility. How can we implement a tool to evaluate occupancy feedback on i...

The term Assistive Technology has evolved over the years and identifies equipment or product systems, whether acquired, modified, or customized, that are used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Considering the advances that have been made, what trends can be identified to provide evidence of...

The term “Assistive Technology” (AT) has evolved over the years and identifies equipment or product systems, whether acquired, modified, or customized, that are used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Considering the advances that have been made, what trends can be identified to provide evide...

Accessibility is generally recognised as an important element of architectural design practice. However, studies suggest that the adoption of Inclusive Design by the architectural design community is still quite limited. Inclusive Design embraces the principles of accessibility and its extended definition considers key sociological and behavioural...

The world is ageing, and this change will strongly impact the design of products, services and environments. Notwithstanding the proliferation of research initiatives, guidelines, policies and regulations, there is still a significant gap and lack of a uniformed strategy to guide engineers, designers, and architects to design inclusive environments...

Since the mid-20th century, assessing the performance of the built environment was recognized as an instrument to improve the efficiency in the design and construction processes. However, it appears difficult to identify assessment tools that currently include a holistic assessment of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility criteria for the...

Our environment, whether at work, in public spaces, or at home, is becoming more connected, adaptive and increasingly responsive. This is due in part to the significant number of sensors that detect information and data around us. Connected technologies are also emerging as a support to address daily challenges for people with disabilities and for...

Visual representations are a consistent component of human evolution. They are forms of concept designs using combinations of colors, patterns, and geometrical figures. As history displays, graphical visualization has been used since early ages as a mean to transfer knowledge between human beings across generations. Recently, visual representations...

Visual representations are becoming important in science communication and education. This explorative study investigates the perception of STEM researchers, without any specific visual design background, and the value of visual representations as tools to support the communication of technical and scientific knowledge among academics and a wider n...

Our environment, whether at work, in public spaces, or at home, is becoming more connected, and increasingly responsive. Meal preparation even when it involves simply heating ready-made food can be perceived as a complex process for people with disabilities. This research aimed to prototype, using a co-Design approach a Community Supported Applianc...

This book focuses on the importance of human factors in the development of safe and reliable robotic and unmanned systems. It discusses current challenges, such as how to improve the perceptual and cognitive abilities of robots, develop suitable synthetic vision systems, cope with degraded reliability in unmanned systems, and predict robotic behavi...

This book focuses on the importance of human factors in the development of safe and reliable robotic and unmanned systems. It discusses solutions for improving the perceptual and cognitive abilities of robots, developing suitable synthetic vision systems, coping with degraded reliability in unmanned systems, and predicting robotic behavior in relat...

The global introduction of affordable Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers an opportunity to empower a large variety of users with different needs. However, many off-the-shelf digital products are still not widely adopted by people who are hesitant technology users or by older adults, notwithstanding that the design and user-interaction of these...

The global introduction of affordable Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers an opportunity to empower a large variety of users with different needs. However, many off-the-shelf digital products are still not widely adopted by people who are hesitant technology users or by older adults, notwithstanding that the design and user-interaction of these...

The role of the built environment in the context of healthcare service highly impacts how human interactions take place. However, when an environment has already been built not respecting accessibility features, future actions are going to be more expensive and often ineffective. Accessibility legislation in Mexico was published after many healthca...

The world population is steadily ageing and the World Health Organization recently stated that 8.5 percent of people worldwide are aged 65 and over. This cohort is projected to account for 1.6 billion people by 2050. Assistive Technology has been developed over previous decades with a par-ticular aim to support people with disabilities. With the e...

The Quality Function Deployment, was born in Japan around 1965 as a method to deploy functions forming quality and measurable parameters concerning products, service or processes based on user needs. QFD is normally used in business contexts by multidisciplinary teams that, after significant training, collaborate to compile and to interpret user re...

The Internet of Things, smart devices, connected health and ICT have the potential to enable people, carers and families to improve the quality of health and social wellbeing. One factor that can help people with physical or cognitive impairments to learn new skills and to be connected with the world, concerns accessible interaction with media devi...

It is known that one of the key factors for many manufacturing companies, who are involved in the design and development process, is represented by the quality of the skills, capacity and experience of computer-aided design draftsman and designers. This means that effective, up-to-date and engaging training has to be performed by teachers and instr...

Information technology is increasingly becoming an integral part of contemporary life. Most tasks that are performed over the course of a day, involve the use of different types of connected devices. About two billion contemporary consumers use smartphones [1]. These smartphones contain a variety of sensors that can collect information about their...

We are currently living in a decade where smart objects and Internet of Things (IoT)-based devices are becoming part of daily life in different contexts. This research seeks to investigate and verify, by using a formal literature review methodology, the most visible aspects of technological development, within the Industry 4.0 and IoT scenario, in...

The main body of research clearly highlights the world’s population is rapidly expanding. When this fact is combined with the increase in life longevity due to medical and social advances it alters the demographic balance in relation to age. Hence, the number of people aged 65 and over is constantly increasing. The potential of Smart Technologies a...

Product personalisation has become a central topic and expected part of every day life. Different people have different characteristics and abilities and each user has different needs which means that products have to be tailored accordingly. Microwave ovens are one of the most commonly used home appliances. People use them to quickly heat or cook...

The population of older adults will continuously increase over the coming decades. As they get older, people will require assistance and regular monitoring, with higher costs for welfare system and families. Two vital aspects of a healthy lifestyle, are domestic autonomy and maintenance of relationships within the neighborhood. This leads to an int...

According to the latest research by the European Community and ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) surveys, Europe has the highest average age for its population. According to those data, in the near future, it could be necessary to move from a welfare model based on the centralization of care systems, to a system based on the distribu...

The present work has been developed from an accurate study on the Wearable Devices within the S.H.E.L.L. project (Secure Habitat for an Enhanced Long Living), led by the Department of Architecture in Genoa, which focuses on “Made in Italy” industrial innovation. The project seeks to create a new assistance system for mentally disabled people or peo...

This paper presents the outcome of the Workshop on Robot Interface Design, which was held in Genoa (Italy) over the months of January and February 2014 and was jointly organized by Polytechnic School at the University of Genoa and the National Research Council. The aim of the workshop was to study the design of physical, functional and graphical in...

This chapter presents a preliminary study to design a couple of robots, conceived to assist senior citizens 65+ in domestic and public space. The design and development of these two robots, named Domestic and Condominium, concerned, from one hand, appropriate criteria of acceptability, usability, aesthetic and safety, and on the other hand specific...