The increasing diffusion of deepfakes has raised significant global concerns, especially due to their potential geopolitical implications. This concern relates to the spread of false information that can mislead people and have a serious impact on societies. However, identifying what can misinform people is not trivial. In this work, we present an experimental study that involves a sample of students of different backgrounds. Three different political deepfakes were created and shown to them. The perceived values were then analyzed using a specific questionnaire. The experimental results show significant differences in the ability to discern the authenticity of the proposed videos depending on the level of awareness of the contents viewed. This demonstrates the crucial role of education on deepfakes in countering the spread of misinformation.

In this work, we develop and analyze the impact of using a gamified application to encourage users to adopt an eco-sustainable driving style. The proposed solution uses elements of gamification such as rankings, scores, prizes, and levels to encourage and engage the driver in an urban context. The score, in terms of eco-sustainable driving, is calculated by considering vehicle speed, acceleration and braking parameters during the driving session. The application also provides real-time feedback in order to help the driver improve his/her driving style. Whenever the application detects a sudden change in speed, known as an unsustainable behavior, it will warn the user so as to let him/her correct the driving style. Our solution is oriented to assist people in eco-sustainable driving while preventing them from loss of interest and from reverting to his/her former bad driving behaviors.

In this work, we propose a system whose goal is to improve road safety by leveraging the Situation Awareness (SA) of drivers. Our solution is based on a mobile application that, through web services, a real-time database, and onboard sensors, provides drivers with continuous audio and visual feedback supporting specific elements of the SA to help users to drive safely. Moreover, a companion smartwatch application was designed to give drivers additional notifications through a combination of long and short vibrations. Such notification can be used to strengthen the smartphone notification or as an alternative to them.

The evaluation of Dyslexeasy, a reading program for mobile Android devices that is specifically built for people with dyslexia, is presented in this research. Dyslexeasy combines the most effective approach to show text to persons with dyslexia with a unique feature: progressive text reproduction. Our first prototype is for Italian, despite the fact that the novel algorithm employed for this unique feature is language agnostic. We conducted a pilot study with possible stakeholders to evaluate Dyslexeasy. Working with five dyslexic participants, we assessed the effectiveness of the algorithm on the basis of dyslexia, as well as the user experience. Our findings reveal that the participants were satisfied with the quality of the text generated by the algorithm and the overall user experience. As a result, we argue in this paper that a mobile app like Dyslexeasy could have a significant influence on persons with dyslexia.

In Industry 4.0, Human Machine Interfaces are largely used in order to increase the performances of production processes at the same time reducing the number of emergencies and accidents. In manufacturing, the most typical system used to monitor the production is the Andon. It is a graphical system exploited in plants to notify operators who deal with management, maintenance and production performance of the presence of a problem. Of course, the usability of such interfaces is essential to allow an operator to identify and react more effectively to potentially critical situations. Improving the usability of such interfaces is a big challenge due to the increasing complexity of the data that must be processed and understood quickly by operators. In this paper, we present a set of guidelines to help professional developers to design usable interfaces for monitoring industrial production in manufacturing. Such guidelines are based on usability principles and formalized by reviewing existing industrial interfaces. Using a realistic case study prepared with manufacturing experts, we propose an Andon interface that we developed to test the efficacy of these guidelines on a last generation touch-wall device.

Today, the deaf community represents a population of more than 70 million individuals around the globe. Sign language is recognized as one of the most popular means of communication for the deaf. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes and promotes the use of sign languages and establishes that their use is critical to ensuring access to information and services, both in everyday life and during emergencies. However, most public information and service providers do not comply with the goal of providing information and services through speech-to-sign language interpreters. In this paper we leverage the results of our previous work and propose ProSign+, a cloud-based speech-to- sign language platform conceived as an intermediary service for any legal entity which is expected to provide inclusive access to information and services also for deaf people (e.g., public transportation companies, municipalities, hospitals, schools and higher education institutions). The idea is to foster a cost-effective transformation of public service providers towards the goal of leaving no one behind, which is central to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015.

This article introduces a new soft keyboard, named Tap and Slide, specifically designed for mobile devices. The new interaction method, on which the keyboard is based, allows performing text entry operations in a very small space, so minimizing the space required. To evaluate the keyboard from a usability point of view, three studies were performed: the first verifies whether the subjects’ abilities expressed in terms of technological knowledge may specifically provide advantages in performing text entry operations, the second tries to understand the ease of learning of the keyboard considering both accuracy and efficiency in task execution, and the third analyzes the performance of the soft keyboard in comparison with the more common QWERTY soft keyboard.

The widespread use of mobile devices in basic map navigation tasks has recently attracted researchers on usability problems arising from the reduced visualization area and the limited interaction modes allowed by small screens. In this paper we analyze the most common approaches suggested in the literature and present the results of a usability study carried out on one of them, an interactive technique, named FRAMY, which was conceived to cover a wider range of spatial data visualization tasks, possibly involving different geographic layers. A comparative usability study has been carried out on Framy and a traditional map application in order to evaluate the inoact of the novel approach on usability, in terms of efficiency and efficacy.

Nowadays, spatial data are totally widespread in mobile applications. They are present in games, map applications, web community applications and office automations. However this kind of spatial information potentially needs a large display area and the hardware constraint related to the limited screen dimensions creates many usability challenges. Our investigation in the last few years to find solutions to these challenges has led us to the discovery of general usability principles that a well-designed interface should adopt. In this paper we describe the mental path we have followed to derive those principles from the experience gained in developing mobile interfaces for different application domains. The principles are formalized in terms of two interaction design patterns, specific for mobile interfaces managing spatial data. They extend existing HCI patterns and are completed, as usual, with concrete examples of their applications.

Spreadsheets are intensively used for crucial management activities by several organizations. Collaboration through spreadsheet is recognized to be a powerful means to enhance crucial activities carried out in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME). However, the main obstacles to its realization appears to be the small size and the limited human and financial resources, which usually characterize SMEs themselves. We present a collaborative environment for spreadsheet-based activities, that overcomes such limitation allowing a smooth shift from single user to multiple user spreadsheet application deployment.