Our life is characterized by the presence of a multitude of interactive devices and smart objects exploited for disparate goals in different contexts of use. Thus, it is impossible for application developers to predict at design time the devices and objects users will exploit, how they will be arranged, and in which situations and for which objectives they will be used. For such reasons, it is important to make end users able to easily and autonomously personalize the behaviour of their Internet of Things applications, so that they can better comply with their specific expectations. In this paper, we present a method and a set of tools that allow end users without programming experience to customize the context-dependent behaviour of their Web applications through the specification of trigger-action rules. The environment is able to support end-user specification of more flexible behaviour than what can be done with existing commercial tools, and it also includes an underlying infrastructure able to detect the possible contextual changes in order to achieve the desired behaviour. The resulting set of tools is able to support the dynamic creation and execution of personalized application versions more suitable for users’ needs in specific contexts of use. Thus, it represents a contribution to obtaining low threshold/high ceiling environments. We also report on an example application in the home automation domain, and a user study that has provided useful positive feedback.

Current authoring environments provide the possibility of developing user interfaces with limited adaptation capacities. The most widely adopted tools follow the responsive design approach and allow developers to obtain user interfaces that can adapt mainly to the screen size and orientation. We present a solution able to support development of user interfaces able to adapt to the various types of contextual events (that can be related to users, devices, environments, and social relationships), with the added possibility of distributing the user interface elements across multiple devices. The context-dependent behavior is modelled through trigger / action rules, and can even be applied to Web applications that were not originally designed to be context-aware. This paper describes the design and main features of the novel authoring environment and reports on a first user study.

In this work we present an environment able to support users in seamless access to Web applications in multi-device contexts. The environment supports dynamic push and pull of interactive Web applications, or parts of them, across desktop and mobile devices while preserving their state.

The effort and time required to develop user interface models has been one of the main limitations to the adoption of model-based approaches, which enable intelligent processing of user interface descriptions. In this paper, we present a tool to perform reverse engineering of interactive dynamic Web applications into a model-based framework able to describe them at various abstraction levels. We indicate how information in HTML, HTML 5, CSS, Ajax and JavaScript is transformed into such logical framework, which facilitates adaptation to other types of interactive devices. We also discuss how this reverse engineering tool has been exploited in an environment for run-time adaptation or migration of interactive Web applications to various devices in ubiquitous use cases.

In ubiquitous environments migratory interactive applications allow users to perform their tasks continuously across various devices. Users can push and pull migratory Web applications from one device to another for various reasons. However, the flexibility of such pervasive applications raises various security issues, such as the risk of theft of private information from the migrated user interfaces or the intrusion of malicious versions of the applications replacing the original ones. In this paper, we analyse such risks and present a number of solutions to address them in a client/server-based solution for supporting secure migration of interactive Web applications.

We discuss our solution for partial Web migration from large screens to mobile devices. It is based on multiple UI abstraction levels and some transformations that allow the migration of selected UI components to another device.

Ubiquitous environments call for innovative uses of existing applications. In this paper we present our solution for partial Web migration: it allows users to interactively select parts of existing interfaces and have them migrate to a target device. The underlying supporting platform exploits logical user interface descriptions and a set of transformations. This environment is particularly useful for supporting mobile users accessing complex Web applications, such as various emerging mash-ups. We also show an example of use of our solution in a widespread Web application, and report on a user test.

In this paper, we propose UbiCicero, a multi-device, location-aware museum guide able to opportunistically exploit large screens when users are nearby. Various types of games are included in addition to the museum and artwork descriptions. The mobile guide is equipped with an RFID reader, which detects nearby tagged artworks. By taking into account context-dependent information, including the current user position and behaviour history, as well as the type of device available, more personalised and relevant information is provided to the user, enabling a richer overall experience. We also present example applications of this solution and then discuss the results of first empirical tests performed to evaluate the usefulness and usability of the enhanced multi-device guide.

I propose an investigation on location sensing and multimodal output for aiding blinds in mobility and orientation. The aim of my thesis is the design and evaluation of a compact and cost-effective configuration based on a consumer PDA with little custom hardware. The results of the performed tests will allow to define a set of guidelines to enhance the future generation of mobile devices with sensors and actuators.

In this paper, we present a solution for supporting vibrotactile feedback in mobile museum guides for blind users. To this end, we have designed and implemented a hardware/software module, which can be easily plugged into current PDAs to assist blind users in orientation. The solution, which comprises a two-channels haptic module as well as vocal support, has been exploited for moving through tagged objects. We also report on a user evaluation carried out with a number of blind users.