Nowadays more than a billion people worldwide experience some form of disability pointing out that accessibility is a major issue that should be taken seriously into consideration. Attempting to make people’s daily habits in the kitchen area easier and more comfortable, we designed an innovative smart accessible cupboard that can identify various information about the products that are placed inside it, such as their type, quantity, location and expiration date. The Smart Kitchen Cupboard is a component of the Intelligent Kitchen aiming to support users in that space by indicating where to find a desired item, assisting in a context-sensitive manner during the cooking process and helping the overall inventory organization. Our immediate plans include planning a full-scale user evaluation in order to get useful feedback about the current design decisions so as to further improve the prototype and integrate more features.

While the body of research focusing on Intelligent Environments (IEs) programming by adults is steadily growing, informed insights about children as programmers of such environments are limited. Previous work already established that young children can learn programming basics. Yet, there is still a need to investigate whether this capability can be transferred in the context of IEs, since encouraging children to participate in the management of their intelligent surroundings can enhance responsibility, independence, and the spirit of cooperation. We performed a user study (N=15) with children aged 7-12, using a block-based, gamified AR spatial coding prototype allowing to manipulate smart artifacts in an Intelligent Living room. Our results validated that children understand and can indeed program IEs. Based on our findings, we contribute preliminary implications regarding the use of specific technologies and paradigms (e.g. AR, trigger-action programming) to inspire future systems that enable children to create enriching experiences in IEs.

Considering the prevalence of Ambient Intelligence, this work aims to enhance the interaction between farmers and Intelligent Environments, in order to support their various daily Agricultural activities, aspiring to improve the quality and quantity of cultivated species. Towards this direction, the Greta system was designed and developed, following a user-centered design process, permitting farmers/agronomists to easily monitor and control an Intelligent Greenhouse via a set of useful and usable applications. Greta offers a progressive web app (PWAs) targeting PCs, handheld devices, and technologically-enhanced artifacts of Smart Homes, while it also delivers an Augmented Reality application that visualizes the greenhouse's interior conditions in a sophisticated manner, and provides context-sensitive assistance regarding cultivation activities. In more detail, the system interoperates with the ambient facilities of an Intelligent Greenhouse allowing end-users to: monitor the conditions inside the greenhouse, remotely control the state of various actuators, be notified regarding the available/active automations, be aware of the optimal conditions for their plants to grow and receive relevant guidelines, be informed regarding any diseases, and communicate with experts for receiving treatment advice. This work describes the design methodology and functionality of Greta, and documents the results of a series of expert-based evaluation experiments.

This work aims to investigate how the amenities offered by Intelligent Environments can be used to shape new types of useful, exciting and fulfilling experiences while watching sports or movies. Towards this direction, two ambient media players were developed aspiring to offer live access to secondary information via the available displays of an Intelligent Living Room, and to appropriately exploit the technological equipment so as to support natural interaction. Expert-based evaluation experiments revealed some factors that can influence the overall experience significantly, without hindering the viewers’ immersion to the main media.

This paper describes an educational game that aims to familiarize cognitive impaired children with household objects, the overall home environment and the daily activities that take place in it. In addition to touch-based interaction, the game supports physical manipulation through printed cards on a tabletop setup, using a webcam to detect and track the cards placed on the game board.

This system paper describes two educational mini-games (a multiple-choice quiz and a geography-related game) that combine learning and ambient technology. Their innovative feature is that they offer physical interaction through printed cards on a tabletop setup, where a simple webcam monitors the table's surface and identifies the thrown cards. Following a brief discussion of ambient technology integration in the environment, the overall concept of these games is described and potential future improvements are outlined.

Information and Communication technologies have the potential to permeate the classroom and modernize the educational process. However, in the context of a smart classroom, building educational applications poses unique challenges from an HCI perspective, due to the diversity of user and context requirements. This paper introduces a framework that facilitates the design, development and deployment of pervasive educational applications that can automatically transform according to the context of use to ensure their usability. The collection of widgets incorporates both common basic widgets (e.g., buttons, images) and mini interfaces frequently used in educational applications, as ready-to-use modules. The designer can either (i) combine and customize widgets from both categories to build an interface just once, or (ii) build and incorporate it as a custom-made mini interface in the collection for future reuse. Finally, the framework's usability has been evaluated with users obtaining very positive results and potential suggestions for extensions.

In this work we present "AlertMe", a semantics-based, context-aware notification system that provides personalized alerts to graduate students based on their preferences. An extensive description of the system is carried out. We present the underlying ontology that models the available knowledge, as well as how higher level knowledge inference and context-based decision making is achieved through rule-based reasoning. Finally, we outline the technical aspects of the developed system, covering issues involving the integration of the various subcomponents.