Paolo Paolini

• Politecnico di Milano

This paper proposes a general approach for using conversational interfaces such as chatbots to offer adaptive learning of business processes in an environment involving different actors. Adaptivity concerns both the content being proposed, the sequence of learning items, and the way the conversation is conducted. The original approach allows the de...

This paper proposes using chatbots as “tutors” in a learning environment; tutors who are not domain experts but helpers in guiding students through bodies of learning material. The most original contributions are the proposal that conversation should be content-independent (although chatbots speak about content); The production process should allow...

Using chatbots in education in this era is a promising way to engage students in an efficient learning experience. This paper is about using conversational interfaces and chatbots to support adaptive learning experiences. Adaptivity concerns both access to content (to support specific learning needs) and how the conversation is carried on (to make...

Using chatbots in digital factories, to interact with devices through instant messages and voice commands, can make the understanding of underlying manufacturing, logistic and business processes easier for workers. Intelligent chatbots can provide flexible conversations and tailor them to the specific users who are interacting. The iCHAT framework...

City4Age (Elderly-friendly city services for active and healthy ageing) is a research and innovation project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme. The first and core objective of City4Age has been to enable Ambient Assisted Cities or Age-friendly Cities. The project created an innovative framework on ICT tools and serv...

This paper describes the development of chatbots that can help learners make the most appropriate use of a large body of content. The purpose of a COntent-based Learning Assistant, COLA, is to suggest optimal educational paths, along with a persuasive and empathic coaching. COLAs are supported by a novel technology, iCHAT, based on the cognitive en...

This paper describes an environment based on rich interactive diagrams, allowing the geriatricians and caregivers to access, analyze and precisely annotate or label specific granular cases of interest in a variety of heterogeneous data collected, to identify “behaviour changes” through Smart City IoT and Open Data infrastructures. The overall goal...

The presented work describes an interactive environment that allows geriatricians and caregivers to access, analyze and understand a variety of heterogeneous data obtained from smart city ICT infrastructure. The objective is to identify and characterize relevant behaviour changes using the newly developed multifunctional dashboard interfaces. The o...

The Big Data challenge has made the issue of “making sense” of data urgent and unavoidable. This paper introduces exploratory computing (EC), a novel paradigm whose aim is to support a comprehensive “exploratory” experience for the user. “Exploratory” because it supports search and discovery of information through various tasks (investigation, know...

The advent of the Big Data challenge has stimulated research on methods and techniques to deal with the problem of managing data abundance. Many approaches have been developed, but for the most part, they attack one specific side of the problem: e.g. efficient querying, analysis techniques that summarize data or reduce its dimensionality, data visu...

This paper proposes a set of requirements for a new generation of exploratory portals, fully exploiting and developing the principles and the aims of Exploratory Computing.

The advent of the Big Data challenge has stimulated research on methods to deal with the problem of managing data abundance. Many approaches have been developed, but for the most part, they attack one specific side of the problem: e.g. efficient querying, analysis techniques that summarize data or reduce its dimensionality, data visualization, etc....

The advent of the Big Data challenge has stimulated research on methods to deal with the problem of managing data abundance. Many approaches have been developed, but for the most part, they attack one specific side of the problem: e.g. efficient querying, analysis techniques that summarize data or reduce its dimensionality, data visualization, etc....

The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model presents the three types of knowledge that are necessary to implement a successful technologybased educational activity. It highlights how the intersections between TPK (Technological Pedagogical Knowledge), PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and TCK (Technological Content Knowledge) are...

Websites were originally conceived for a text-based interface, but very early (from MOSAIC on) they became the epitome of graphic interface applications. A Web page is inherently complex since it simultaneously conveys pieces of content and relationships among them, “links ” to other pages, etc. If the core of the communication lies in the content,...

Digital storytelling is emerging as the most relevant way to deliver content in the digital age. In essence, a digital story combines visual communication (slideshows, videos or animations) with audio. Optional text can be used for additional details. Most people agree today that digital stories are the best way for engaging users across several de...

The book presents a comprehensive vision of the impact of ICT on the contemporary city, heritage, public spaces and meta-cities on both urban and metropolitan scales, not only in producing innovative perspectives but also related to newly discovered scientific methods, which can be used to stimulate the emerging reciprocal relations between cities...

This paper is about how serious games based on MUVEs in formal education can foster collaboration. More specifically, it is about a large case-study with four different programs which took place from 2002 to 2009 and involved more than 9,000 students, aged between 12 and 18, from various nations (18 European countries, Israel and the USA). These pr...

Technologies are changing the way we teach and learn in many respects. A relevant and not yet fully explored aspect is that they can support, even entice, students and teachers to go beyond the school boundaries, in spatial and temporal terms. Teachers and learners can keep in touch and work together, when they are not at school; they can access "t...

In this paper we investigate the potential of digital storytelling in the context of formal education (i.e. as a classroom activity). Our discussion is based upon the empirical evidence provided by a six-years’ experience in Italian classes of all school grades (including pre-school), which has involved so far more than 17,000 students. The evaluat...

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are often used to support learning in formal and informal educational contexts. A technology-based educational experience consists of several elements: content, syllabus, roles, sequence of activities, assignments, assessment procedures, etc. that must be aligned with the affordances of the technologies to be...

This paper presents PoliCultura, a large-scale initiative introducing collaborative digital storytelling in formal education. PoliCultura has involved more than 17,000 participants from 2006, from pre-school to high school. It engages participants and also fosters the achievement of substantial educational benefits, monitored each year via online s...

This paper is about multimedia communication, for Tourism. Two original concepts are introduced: Multimedia Brochure and Communication Chain. A Multimedia Brochure is an agile and versatile interactive multimedia available for all kinds of devices and technologies: it can be used by any “actor” of tourism in order to make itself “visible” and “pers...

There is a growing interest in the use of collaborative technologies for education. However, their adoption and implementation in formal education is still lagging behind. One feature of cooperative technologies makes them particularly unusable in classroom settings: most tools, environments and interfaces for co-located collaboration are designed...

In this paper we present the "Learning4All" (L4ALL) project, which has the aim of developing knowledge about how technology and pedagogy influence the quality of educational experiences. Our approach is empirical rather than theoretical: instead of scavenging literature, we collect credible evidence from Italian teachers on the job who create innov...

This chapter is about how to make an effective use of MUVEs (Multi-Users Virtual Environments) in formal education. It draws on the authors' experience with four different programs deployed since 2002 involving, so far, more than 9,000 students from 18 European countries including Israel and the USA. The chapter is intended as a set of "lessons lea...

From year 2006, thousands of students (aged between 5 and 18 years) and hundreds of teachers have taken part in PoliCultura, an initiative by HOC-LAB of Politecnico di Milano calling Italian schools to create multimedia "narratives". A number of user studies show that relevant and substantial educational benefits are achieved thanks to this program...

Due to the proliferation of ever new devices, many of them portable, digital communication is really getting “everywhere, at anytime”. The question is, how effectively are multimedia applications “surfing” from one device/context of use to the other, not from a technological but from a substantial, content-driven point of view? Do they really fit t...

This paper is about visitors’ preferences for cultural heritage (multimedia) information. The issues concern the quality of the information (e.g. practical, general, specific), the “depth” of the information, and the “timing” for delivering such information (e.g. during, before or after a visit).The discussion about these issues is based upon a vis...

Can new technologies help didactic? Can education at school make use of games? Do educational games have to be cooperative or competitive? A possible answer is offered by SEE, Shrine Educational Experience: a joint project of Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the aim is to provide an effective educational experience (about the...

This paper introduces an innovative approach for teaching higher education students how to professionally communicate using advanced technologies. It is based on a large scale experience with 266 students from the Università della Svizzera italiana (Switzerland), Faculty of Communication Sciences. Although a basic mastering of technologies is also...

This paper is about an innovative approach for building, at low cost and in quick time, effective multimedia brochures that can be delivered through multiple channels: as web applications, as downloadable applications (for example, for iPod or smart-phone), as off-line applications (for example, CD-ROM, USB), as information-points, as standard (int...

Accessible websites are websites that can be used by all kinds of users, including those with one or more disabilities. In this paper we focus on accessibility for blind users, although a similar approach could be adopted for other disabilities. The originality of our approach consists of focusing on usability rather than technical accessibility: a...

This paper is about assessing how and under which conditions digital technology interactions and activities can enhance socio-cognitive abilities in children. We address this issue through a comparison between canonical and digital-based narrative activities in a formal educational setting. The paper is based upon a case study carried on in a prima...

There is a growing interest in the use of cooperative technologies for education. In formal education, however, such an introduction is more difficult than it may look at first sight. There are few successful cases of implementation of cooperative technologies in schools, with proper integration in the curriculum. This paper draws on empirical data...

Since the nineties, storytelling has received increasing attention in the HCI, IDC, and AI communities, exploring the potential of interactivity and multimedia as a means to promote engagement, enjoyment, fun, to foster new forms of children's creativity, and to increase the educational benefits of traditional storytelling for this target group. Th...

This paper details a way to extend classic information architecture for web-based applications. The goal is to enhance traditional user experiences, mainly based on navigation or search, to new ones (also relevant for stakeholders’ requirements). Examples are sense making, at a glance understanding, playful exploration, serendipitous browsing, and...

In this paper we introduce the "Instant MultiMedia" (IMM) approach to ICT-based communication. IMM is characterized for being quick (30 days to deliver the application) and low cost (5,000 US dollars for a medium-sized applications). It is therefore a suitable solution in a number of occasions: when a sudden communication need arises, in the case o...

When "going digital" in the field of education one possible option - typically adopted in higher and adult education - is, so to speak, to "enhance the real world" through technology. Course materials are provided in digital format, face-to-face interaction is replaced by forums or social spaces, exercises and activities are remotely performed and...

This paper introduces PoliCultura, a project created by Politecnico di Milano for the Italian schools, which has just completed three years of deployment. Participating classes (with pupils aged between 4 and 18 years) are required to create their own multimedia story, using an authoring-delivery environment (1001stories) provided by Politecnico di...

Bioinformatics websites offer to the life science large community re- positories of information ranging from genes, genomes, proteins, experimental data and their integration, with the aim of supporting the elucidation of biologi- cal processes. As the bioinformatics community increasingly relies on the de- sign, sharing and use of web-based resour...

Online interactive applications call for new requirements paradigms to capture the growing complexity of computer-mediated communication. Crafting successful interactive applications (such as websites and multimedia) involves modeling the requirements for the user experience, including those leading to content design, usable information architectur...

Corporations across the globe are increasingly considering the importance of user experience and business process design in creation of Web information systems. Designing Complex Web Information Systems: Integrating Evolutionary Process Engineering provides an overview of modern Web application technologies useful to business designers. This Premie...

This work has been partly funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture, and the European Social Fund (ESF) under grant 31.963/46‐VII/9/2002. The authors would like to thank Andreas Schönbeck and Alexander Knapp for their fruitful comments and contributions to prior versions of this work.

Accessibility, i.e. the possibility for users with specific disabilities to access Web resources, has received specific attention by the W3C consortium that has produced guidelines for web developers. These guidelines are, mostly, technical recommendations and a few very generic tips about how to design for accessibility. The main thesis of this pa...

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 (except those whose aim is mainly operational)....

Motivation -- In the field of cultural heritage, the need for producing fresh contents in many cases outruns the possibilities of the institution itself, while outsourcing can be too expensive to employ. The 1001 Stories authoring package that makes the object of this paper was meant to provide to cultural institutions a solution for speedy creatio...

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where studen...

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where studen...

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where studen...

Requirements engineering has traditionally focused on identifying functional and non functional requirements to inform design, and to ensure that the product under development accommodates the needs of the end users, the goals of the different stakeholders, as well as the technological, organizational, and business constraints. For requirements ana...

Multichannel Adaptive Web Information Systems (WISs) are emerging as a new class of information systems, characterized by their powerful use of mobility and context-awareness. Different methodologies have been proposed so far for the analysis and design of Multichannel Adaptive WISs, specifically focused on the front-end layer or the back-end layer...

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...

In a fast-changing world, there is an increasingly felt need to bring what we teach and how we teach it into the 21st Century.

The CIMAD project, "Common Infrastructure/Context Influenced Mobile Acquisition and Delivery of cultural heritage data", is presented. CIMAD is a framework concerned with the development of cultural heritage "services" designed and implemented within the EU Network of Excellence EPOCH - Excellence in Processing Open Cultural Heritage. CIMAD aims to...

Nowadays websites use, above all, the "visual channel" to communicate content, functionality and navigation/interaction capabilities. Users who, permanently or temporarily, cannot use their eyes to interact with an application (not only visuallyimpaired but also people who cannot look at the screen while interacting) need a new paradigm of interact...

Aural interactive Web sites are mainly (and in same cases exclusively) based upon "listening to", instead of "looking at". They are needed when users have visual impairments, or not much attention can be paid to a screen (possibly also a tiny one). Web sites, today, and even most mobile applications, use, above all, the "visual channel" to communic...

Multichannel applications deliver the same content and a "similar interactive experience" using different devices and different technologies(e.g., web sites, palm held devices, car navigators, or interactive TVs). Various channels imply a number of differences, including screen (size), keyboard(size), pointing devices, output devices, performances,...

The paper is a brief introduction to HDM2, which is the evolution of the Hypertext Design Model HDM [9]. The main features of HDM2, with respect to HDM, are an improvement of the access mechanisms, a generalisation of the notion of link, an extension of the notion of derivation, the definition of hyperviews, and finally a refinement of the definiti...

There is a growing interest in the development of advanced applications, i.e. applications making use of the paradigms and tools developed within the Artificial Intelligence community. On the other hand standard tools for Data Base management are needed to operative handle data for the traditional operative tasks. Therefore, in the near future, the...

DEA is a project that aims at the individuation, cataloguing and dissemination of best practices in the usage of digital literacy for disabled people. This project has been submitted within the framework of the e-Learning Programme (DG EAC/26/04) of the European Community, and it's being developed by a consortium of partners including the Politecni...

To be successful, any engineering product should accomplish the needs and expectations of its potential stakeholders. Similarly, design models should be defined taking into account goals and requirements of their users, i.e. the practitioners who daily conceive, develop and deploy applications. Neglecting stakeholders' needs can bring to lack of at...

Can 3D graphics convey robust cultural value in an effective, engaging way? Can virtual worlds be a magic place where intercultural exchange with remote peers takes place? Can difficult students be "rescued" by unusual learning activities supported by technologies? Can teachers play a fundamental facilitating role while using advanced e-learning to...

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where studen...

Requirements analysis for Web applications still needs to employ effective RE practices to accommodate some distinctive aspects: capturing high-level communication goals, considering several user profiles, defining hypermedia-specific requirements, bridging the gap between requirements and Web design, and reusing requirements for an effective usabi...

Summary form only given. This paper illustrates an innovative approach to the conceptual modeling of a Web site: instead of considering a site as an (interactive) information container we can interpret it as a device capable of generating a dialogue with the user. Activating the selected options represents the user "turns" of the dialogue; the Webs...

FaTe - favole e tecnologia (tales and technology) is a project carried on by Politecnico di Milano which is composed by an online course for teachers and three CD-ROMs for pupils from 4 to 8 year old. The blended solution proposed comes out from a previous edifying collaboration between university and primary school teachers: their huge passion for...

Web-based tourism information systems are more and more required to provide besides traditional tourism information about hotel facilities and infrastructure also cultural content comprising material heritage, performing art, folk tradition, handicraft or simply habits of everyday life. These cultural Web applications are required not to offer onli...

A web experience (a user browsing through a website) has often been compared to a kind of dialogue: the user's conversation consists in selecting and activating links; the web's conversation consists in providing content (responding to the user's choices) and oªering new possibilities of conversation (links). This paper is based on the hypothesis t...

Requirements analysis for Web applications still needs to employ effective RE practices to accommodate some distinctive aspects: capturing high-level communication goals, considering several user profiles, defining hypermedia-specific requirements, and reusing requirements for an effective usability evaluation. Techniques should be usable, informal...

We focus on the effort needed for designing Web applications. The effort required for the design phase is an important part of the total development effort of a Web application, whose implementation can be (partially) automated by tools. We carried out an empirical study with the students of an advanced university class that used W2000, as the spec...

Summary form only given. Nowadays, Web-based applications are facing new challenges both in improving their relations with final users and in diminishing the efforts necessary to update and change product features after its deployment. On one hand, new projects are considering the possibility to provide users with information in different communica...

It is indubitable that usability inspection of complex hypermedia is still an "art", in the sense that a great deal is left to the skills, experience, and ability of the inspectors. Training inspectors is difficult and often quite expensive. The SUE inspection technique has been proposed to help usability inspectors share and transfer their evaluat...

We study the effort needed for designing Web applications from an empirical point of view. The design phase forms an important part of the overall effort needed to develop a Web application, since the use of tools can help automate the implementation phase. We carried out an empirical study with students of an advanced university class that used W2...

Web applications have become more complex blending together several different features: navigation paradigms to browse across information, operations to manipulate data and to perform actions, interactivity, full-fledged transactions, etc. In addition the need to consider several possible devices (including mobile ones and interactive TV), as ways...

This paper presents a model for systematically organizing the activity of requirements analysis for web-based hypermedia digital libraries and for tying it up with design in a coherent fashion. In order to accomplish this goal, three conceptual tools are proposed: a goal-oriented requirements analysis model based on existing practices and concepts...

Modern Web applications are mainly distributed systems that exploit the Internet as communication means and the Web as neutral interface to access services and data. The addition of services to Web applications poses problems that are usually tackled at the technology level, but that should be addressed during design to deliver quality Web applica-...

Web-based hypermedia systems are becoming more and more sophisticated, new modeling requirements constantly arise, and design models must constantly evolve. Since design tools should complement models to support an efficient design process, model evolution raises a technological issue: Design tools must be modified when their underlying model chang...

SUE inspection is a novel usability evaluation method for hypermedia, which falls into the category of inspection methods. Its primary goal is to favor a systematic usability evaluation (SUE), for supplying hypermedia usability inspectors with a structured flow of activities, allowing them to obtain more reliable, comparable, and cost-effective eva...

MiLE (Milano Lugano Evaluation Method) is an innovative method for evaluating the quality and usability of hypermedia applications. In short, an inspection with MiLE requires the following steps: (1) selection of the relevant portion of the application; (2) selection of the abstract tasks that are relevant for the intended user scenarios; (3) execu...

of desktop applications that allow the user to explore a 3D environment, being aware of the presence, the position and the activity of other users, which share the same space. In virtual environments oriented to Cultural Heritage contents, it is thus possible to envision collaboration between users, focused to learning in an innovative and intrigui...

New conceptual tools for effectively supporting the activity of requirements analysis of web applications are needed. Current approaches and model in Requirements Engineering (RE) can be tailored and extended in order to cope with the following distinctive features of interactive and hypermedia- intensive web applications: a) high-level communicati...

Collaborative Virtual Environments are a class of desktop applications that allow the user to explore a 3D environment, being aware of the presence, the position and the activity of other users, which share the same space. In virtual environments oriented to Cultural Heritage contents, it is thus possible to envision collaboration between users, fo...

Cooperation Metaphors are set of rules to support interaction and collaboration between users who want to explore complex content and information together. The rules determine how the collaborative community can be created and managed, how every member of the community can operate on his/her own or can cooperate with other members. Different types...