The main goal of this work is to better understand how vibrotactile feedback obtained through wearable actuators can support indoor orientation in unfamiliar buildings. We designed different wearable vibrotactile prototypes (two wristbands, a flexible/rigid glove, one wristband, a cap and two-bands), and we analysed them in a preliminary test with 7 users to identify the design aspects that are most relevant for a solution guiding a person indoor. We describe the design and its evaluation with 36 users, discussing the results that can be useful for developers who want to use this technology within applications that need support for indoor orientation.

This study aims to understand the potential of using vibrotactile stimulation for indoor orientation in complex, unfamiliar buildings. Four vibrotactile prototypes have been analysed and tested in initial trials in order to investigate the benefits and the problems of each solution. The main goal of this study is to reach a better understanding of the design aspects that make a vibrotactile solution intuitive and effective.

Audio podcasting is increasingly present in the educational field and is especially appreciated as an ubiquitous/pervasive tool ("anywhere, anytime, at any pace") for acquiring or expanding knowledge. We designed and implemented a Web-based Text To Speech (TTS) system for automatic generation of a set of structured audio podcasts from a single text document. The system receives a document in input (doc, rtf, or txt), and in output provides a set of audio files that reflect the document's internal structure (one mp3 file for each document section), ready to be downloaded on portable mp3 players. Structured audio files are useful for everyone but are especially appreciated by blind users, who must explore content audially. Fully accessible for the blind, our system offers WAI-ARIA-based Web interfaces for easy navigation and interaction via screen reader and voice synthesizer, and produces a set of accessible audio files for Rockbox mp3 players (mp3 and talk files), allowing blind users to also listen to naturally spoken file names (instead of their spelled-out strings).

In this paper, we present a solution for dynamic generation of Web user interfaces that can dynamically migrate among different platforms. The solution is based on a migration/proxy server able to automatically convert a desktop service into a service accessible from a different platform, such as a mobile one. This solution can support new environments where users can freely move about and change interaction device while still continuing task performance and accessing the application in a usable manner.

The ever-increasing availability of new types of devices raises a number of issues for user interface designers and interactive software developers. We have designed and developed a tool (TERESA), which can be helpful when designing applications accessible through various device types.

The increasing availability of new types of interaction platforms raises a number of issues for designers and developers. There is a need for new methods and tools to support development of nomadic applications, which can be accessed through a variety of devices. We present a solution, based on the use of three levels of abstractions, that allows designers to focus on the relevant logical aspects and avoid dealing with a plethora of low-level details. We have defined a number of transformations able to obtain user interfaces from such abstractions, taking into account the available platforms and their interaction modalities while preserving usability. The transformations are supported by an authoring tool, TERESA, which provides designers and developers with various levels of automatic support and several possibilities for tailoring such transformations to their needs.

Model-based approaches can be useful when designing nomadic applications, which can be accessed through multiple interaction platforms. Various models and levels of abstraction can be considered in such approaches. The lack of automatic tool support has been the main limitation to their use. We present a tool, TERESA, supporting top-down transformations from task models to abstract user interfaces and then to user interfaces for different types of interaction platforms (such as mobile phones or desktop systems). It allows designers to keep a unitary view of the design of a given nomadic application. Moreover, the tool provides support for obtaining effective interfaces for each type of platform available, taking into account the consequent differences in terms of tasks and their performance

While task modeling and task-based design are entering into current practice in the design of interactive software applications, there is still a lack of tools supporting the development and analysis of task models. Such tools should provide developers with ways to represent tasks, including their attributes and objects and their temporal and semantic relationships, to easily create, analyze, and modify such representations and to simulate their dynamic behavior. In this paper, we present a tool, CTTE, that provides thorough support for developing and analyzing task models of cooperative applications, which can then be used to improve the design and evaluation of interactive software applications. We discuss how we have designed this environment and report on trials of its use.