In the last years the interest for designing and implementing smart spaces grew signi cantly. Many researchers adopted a top-down approach, focusing on embedding smartness in buildings, objects and everyday artefacts. In my research work I propose the adoption of a usercentred design approach to reach a new de nition of smart spaces based on people's needs and requirements. The main goal will be the de nition of a new interaction paradigm supporting natural and spontaneous ways of exchanging information between people and their surroundings.
The concept of smart space characterizes a physical place where people and
technologies cohabit and continuously exchange information in order to create an
interactive space where people's needs and requests are satis ed in an intelligent
way. Focusing on the importance of space in people's everyday life, there are
several studies that highlight how human beings establish a deep relation with
the physical environment in which they live and how, in turn, the environment
in uences the creation of their own identities and personalities [
Introducing technologies in everyday environments makes it harder to maintain these relationships. However, there are many authors interested in introducing technologies in spaces in order to make them smart. In this view, they adopted a top-down approach to characterize a smart space. However, this approach emphasizes the distance between people and space and makes it impossible to maintain an authentic relation between people and space. I propose the adoption of a user-centred design approach to achieve a new characterization of smart spaces based on people's needs and requirements and in which smartness is related to the capability of creating a personalised space that enables a deeper and emotional bond between an individual and the space itself.
The main aim of this work is to characterise a personalized smart space (PSMA) as a an entity where human bodies, the space itself and the smart objects in it create a real interactional network which can increase the quality of everyday life according to the needs, preferences and requirements of each human being that lives inside it.
A PSMA is the setting where a plethora of di erent intelligent components with various capabilities and levels of smartness live and cooperate, a complex system created by the interrelation of people, places and objects.
Body. Traditionally, the body can be considered as a referent to construct
adapted spaces and buildings [
Moreover, the body already presents a set of special tools for interacting with
the environment: the senses [
Space. I would like to consider a space as a composite place, where people, objects and physical space cohabit.
Currently, a smart space (SMA) is de ned as a place enhanced with digital capabilities. Bringing one step further the considerations about body and space in Section 2, we can analyse the role that the body plays in de ning the space. The human represents the main component in the process to describe and organise the surrounding environment. Stressing the importance of the bond that people can establish with the space and exploiting body as the main element to keep in contact with the environment, I intend to reach an innovative de nition of SMA based on the perceptions of space from a user-centred perspective, taking into account the potentiality that humans have to interact in a SMA. We will refer to this notion as Personalised Smart Space (PSMA).
Objects. Objects represent instruments designed to accomplish a task. First,
objects extend human capabilities, improving and/or augmenting her common
abilities [
The main goal of my work is to de ne the novel concept of PSMA as a complex system where body and SPOs cohabit in a shared experiential space with a continuous exchange of information, collaboration and negotiation between them according to the needs of each individual. Using a user-centred approach, I intend to support the idea that not only is a PSMA de ned by the intelligence embedded in it, but it is especially characterized by the capability to adapt in order to accomplish the individual needs, preferences, requirements of each single user, becoming her personal PSMA, able to re ect her personal experiences.
In order to characterize a PSMA and to introduce new paradigms of interaction with it, I will take two di erent methodological steps: rst, I will characterise a PSMA as an SPO, or better as a composite SPO, in which the combination of SPOs with di erent levels of intelligence gives it an higher level of intelligence and responsiveness to users' needs; second, adopting user-centered design, my focus would be on people who will play a central role in the process of de ning the intelligence of the space. Body will be used as an interface and senses would be the principal instruments for exploration of the space. 3.1
De ning smartness. In order to characterize smartness in a space, we need a
classi cation of smartness in objects. An SPO is a combination of a physical and a
digital layer; the latter can be described as a set of computational functionalities
that enhance its abilities yet preserving its physical aspect. Many dimensions can
be taken into account in order to characterise intelligence in an SPO. First of all,
smartness can be regarded as the awareness about its roles and goals according
to di erent contexts of use. Second, it is related to the ability to interact with
humans and other SPOs that constitute the surroundings. Third it can be related
to the ability of making inferences and of learning from experience. In summary
it can be related to the interactional and problem solving capabilities of an SPO.
The highest level of intelligence can be reached with the ability to change its
behaviour according to contextual situation, supporting a continuous and active
exchange of information and states between the SPO and its surrounding [
In the second step, I will focus on human beings and their interaction with the surroundings. As already explained in Section 2, a PSMA can be characterized as complex customized system capable of reshaping and modifying itself for responding to the personal demands of each single individual.
In order to achieve this goal, my plan is: rst, to take into account user's
needs in order to transform a SMA into a PSMA able to respond to them;
second, to design a new interaction paradigm that allow users to exchange needs
and information with the environment in a more natural and spontaneous way.
Mapping user's needs. In order to map the user's needs, I will borrow
techniques from user adaptive ubiquitous systems that are able to adapt their
behaviour and interaction based on user's features and the context. These systems
rely on representations of users (User Models) [
Designing a new interaction paradigm between people and spaces. The emergence of a PSMA able to know, understand and predict user's needs, preferences and requests, will allow a user to interact with it without additional e ort.
Bypassing the traditional interaction model (Fig. 1), the increasing adoption
of wearable technologies opens new opportunities, o ering an interaction with
surrounding spaces that needs a minimal e ort from the users. In fact, wearable
computing allows user to use her own body to get in touch with the
environment.There is a growing interest in designing new natural interaction models,
using gestural interaction and a body in action according to the embodied
cognition theory and its applications [
As a consequence, there is a huge space of new perspectives for the design of ubiquitous natural interaction exploiting the body and senses, taking inspiration from the matching between the capabilities o ered by innovative technologies such as wearable computing, tangible interfaces and the renewed interest in body and senses (Fig. 2).
The current status of my research project is as follows: I analyzed what an
SPO is and in particular how intelligence can be characterized, decomposing it
into several dimensions, discussing and analysing a notion of \granularity of its
intelligence" [
The main aim of my work is twofold: rst, choosing a set of new interactive tools that stimulate a natural interaction in the spaces allowing a continuous exchange of information between people and a SMA in order to create a PSMA; second, designing a new interaction paradigm to support a direct interaction with spaces exploiting body as a natural interface and adopting gesture and senses as the only tools to accomplish these tasks.
The interaction in a PSMA could be based on a new code as a corpus to exchange information in user-friendly way with the environment (Fig. 2). The constant exchange between descriptions of people derived from user models and capabilities and knowledge embedded in a SMA will allow us to build a new concept of PSMA completely based on the user features, needs and preferences, without any mediation in interaction. This will allow people to interact using their body in a more spontaneous way and allow each one of them to build her own PSMA.
Taking inspiration from the steps already de ned in Section 2, the ultimate goal will be the de nition of a spatial framework based on these components and able to provide a set of instruments and guidelines to build a PSMA starting from the de nition of the space itself.