Overview

In the last decade, the spreading of low-cost technologies integrating sensors and actuators has favored the development of the so-called smart objects. This trend has been further fostered by the Internet of Things (IoT), which connects the physical world with the Internet via ubiquitous sensors and actuators.
The opportunities offered by the IoT are amplified by the use of new approaches that, based on novel interaction paradigms, involve directly non-technical users in configuring the joint behavior of their smart objects, among them and with online services. Existing solutions to define the behavior of such “IoT ecosystems” range from systems that leave the users complete control for establishing the joint behavior of smart objects, to solutions that automatically define smart objects behavior exploiting intelligent techniques. In this continuum, different technologies, frameworks, and approaches present different levels of user control and automation. In this perspective, it is also important to consider the emerging role played by social and humanoid robots, which are integrated sets of sensors and actuators with human-like behaviors. Given the diffusion and the relevance that these approaches have been gaining, this workshop aims to serve as a venue for discussing ongoing research and sharing ideas for researchers and practitioners working on solutions to personalize the behavior of IoT ecosystems.

Workshop program

Submissions

We invite submissions of two types: short papers (3-4 pages) and position papers (1-2 pages). Participants are asked to submit their paper describing their recent or future work in one of the areas indicated in the topics of interest. All submissions must be in the CHI Extended Abstracts format (https://chi2020.acm.org/authors/chi-proceedings-format/).
Papers should be submitted in PDF to easychair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=empathy2021). All papers will be reviewed by the organizers and by the program committee based on relevance and significance in order to provide constructive comments to the submitters. Reviewing will be single blind (i.e. author names and affiliations should be listed). If accepted, at least one of the authors must register and attend the workshop.
Final versions of the accepted papers will be published in the CEUR Workshop Proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org/), indexed by Scopus.

Organizers

Giuseppe Desolda is a Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (website: http://ivu.di.uniba.it/people/desolda.htm). His research interests lie in HCI, specifically Interaction with Ubiquitous Systems, IoT, EUD, and UX. Among others, he chaired the “Human-centered cybersecurity” (CHItaly 2019) and the “SERVE: Smart Ecosystems cReation by Visual dEsign” (AVI ’16) workshops.

Vincenzo Deufemia is Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Salerno (website: http://docenti.unisa.it/vincenzo.deufemia). His research interests include data science, pattern recognition and Human-Computer Interaction, with emphasis on usable privacy and security for end users. He has been a member of the organizing committee of several international conferences.

Maristella Matera is Associate Professor at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) of Politecnico di Milano (website: http://matera.faculty.polimi.it/). Her research focuses on aspects at the intersection between Web Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, with emphasis on design methods and tools for Web application development. She has been a member of the organizing committee of several international events - among others, she was program co-chair of AVI 2016. She is an associate editor for the journals “Future Generation Computer Systems” (FGCS) and ACM Transactions on Web (TWeb). She is chair of the Italian chapter of the ACM SIGCHI.

Fabio Paternò is Research Director at CNR-ISTI, where he leads the laboratory on Human Interfaces in Information Systems (website: http://hiis.isti.cnr.it/Users/Fabio/). His research activity has mainly been carried out in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field, with the goal to introduce computational support to improve usability, accessibility, and user experience for all in the various possible contexts of use. For this purpose, he has continuously led for several years numerous interdisciplinary and international projects. He has been co-organiser of several workshops in international conferences.

Massimo Zancanaro is a professor of Human-Computer Interaction ad the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento (website: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/it/Persona/PER0004568/). His research interests are in the field on Human-Computer Interaction and specifically on the topic of Intelligent Interfaces for which he is interested in investigating aspects related to the design as well as to study the reasons for use and non-use. At present, he serves as vice-chair for the Italian Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction and as Associated Editor for the journal Behavior and Information Technology.

Fabiana Vernero is a Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Turin (website: https://www.unito.it/persone/fvernero). She is part of the PhD committee in Modeling and Data Science, University of Turin. Her research interests include intelligent user interfaces, recommender systems and persuasive technolgies