International Projects
Ongoing
AIT & CURE Projects
Completed
- 3rD-LIFE
- AALuis
- AMCOSOP
- APSIS4All
- ATIS4All
- Bedmond
- Elderhop
- CHRONIOUS
- CompanionAble
- CONSENSUS
- EDUCAT
- EMMUS
- FIRM
- FoSIBLE
- HERMES
- LABORANOVA
- LIAISON
- MAYPOLE
- MINET
- OmniPaper
- PICOS
- PrimeLife
- SeniorEngage
- SMILE
- TACIT
- UsabilityNet
- uTRUSTit
- WalkonWeb
- WINPAR
- Xaudio
3rD-LIFE – 3D Virtual Environment For Social Interaction Of Elderly People
2010 - 2012
Project Number: AAL-2009-2-067 (AAL JP)
The general objective of the 3rD-LIFE project was to improve the quality of the life of ageing people, providing them with a virtual tool for interacting with other users and taking part in virtual activities. This was achieved through the development of a 3D virtual environment (based on existing 3D platforms) especially adapted for ageing people. With only a computer and an internet connection, seniors are able to communicate with other users – from their own homes and with their own voices –, to make audio and video calls to real world terminals and to have a more joyful and active life thanks to e-learning tools, cognitive games and other applications that were implemented. Since the users are represented by avatars, accessibility, usability and navigation were among central points of attention. Target group of the 3rD-LIFE project are people from 60 to 75 without specific impairments or cognitive problems.
CURE´s role in the 3rD-LIFE project focused on the requirements analysis and the lab evaluations of the developed virtual environment running technology acceptance and (multi-user) experience studies with older adults.
Project Partners:
- INGEMA (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
- Information & Image Management Systems, S.A. (Spain)
- one2tribe (Poland)
AALuis – Ambient Assisted Living user interfaces
2011 - 2014
Project Number: AAL-2010-3-070 (AAL JP)
Many services older adults could benefit from lack accessibility, adoptability and usability of the user interface. The aim of the AALuis project is to facilitate the connection of different services to different types of user interfaces and thus to enable the future users of AAL Systems to use more services interacting in their preferred way. The project will develop an open middleware layer that can be used for different platforms in order to connect different user interfaces to existing AAL Systems. This will also be demonstrated by developing new services and connecting them to new innovative user interfaces.
CURE is responsible for requirements analysis, for designing the innovative user interfaces and for evaluation.
Project Partners:
- AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (Coordinator, Austria)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- weTouch (Austria)
- zoobe (Germany)
- Prosyst (Germany)
- Verklizan (The Netherlands)
- TP Vision (former Philips Consumer Lifestyle, The Netherlands)
- 50plus GmbH (Austria)
- Hilfswerk Österreich (Austria)
AHEAD – Augmented Hearing Experience and Assistance for Daily Life
2013 - 2016
Project Number: AAL-2012-5-167 (AAL JP)
Augmented Hearing Experience and Assistance for Daily life (AHEAD) aims to improve the quality of life of elderly people by assisting them in maintaining an active and independent lifestyle. Therefore AHEAD combines two devices already adopted by elderly users, glasses and hearing aids, and embeds new technologies in them. For instance a microphone will be integrated, turning the glasses into a full communication device (input and output) and enabling voice control. As health management is important, the modified hearing aid will be able to measure vital signs such as heart rate, body core, temperature and oxygen saturation through sensors that are in contact with the skin of the inner ear. Finally a 3D inertial sensor will record general activity and risky behavior. The AHEAD assistant is wirelessly connected to a smart phone and part of a smart living environment.
Within AHEAD, CURE is responsible for the organization and realization of user studies in Austria. This includes the elaboration of a comprehensive evaluation strategy and its implementation within lab and field trials focusing on the usability, user experience and acceptance of the AHEAD solution by elderly users.
Project Partners:
- ATOS (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Innovationsmanufaktur (Germany)
- Johanniter (Austria)
- Cosinuss (Germany)
- Audit Dato (Denmark)
- Bruckhoff (Germany)
- Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe (Germany)
AMCOSOP – Ambient Communication for Sense Of Presence
2010 - 2013
Project Number: AAL-2009-2-047 (AAL JP)
The AMCOSOP project targeted older adults, with the goal of reducing their loneliness and fear of isolation. This was accomplished by providing these users a sense of assurance that they are never left alone, and the presence of their relatives, friends, and health care personnel. In this project a software platform for managing communication and a user-friendly terminal were developed.
The AMCOSOP system encourages people to stay in contact with others by providing a clear way of displaying availability information on communication partners in an ambient way, while also encouraging its users to maintain social connections with people in their safety net. Information from people in the safety net is collected and displayed in visual form to the senior users, giving them the ability to decide when to initiate social connections, interactions or activities and when to connect to a service provided by the system.
Within AMCOSOP CURE led the requirement analysis phase, developed and evaluated interface concepts for different target users during lab usability studies and organized as well as ran the field trials in Austria and Finland focusing on long-term user experiences of different target user groups.
Project Partners:
- Tampere University of Technology (Coordinator, Finland)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Space Hellas S.A. (Greece)
- Pirkanmaan Senioripalvelut Oy (Finland)
APSIS4All – Accessible Personalized Services In PDTS for all
2011 - 2014
Project Number: FP7-270977 (FP7-CIP-ICT-PSP)
The APSIS4All project sets out to design and validate, in real-life settings, innovative and personalized interfaces that overcome existing accessibility barriers. In a first phase, the project will collect information from 3000 users who will be testing different machines in order to adapt interfaces according to their needs and preferences.
Within this project CURE contributes HCI knowledge to the technology analysis and technology watch task. Furthermore CURE is responsible for the design of accessible interfaces for ticket vending machines based on the collected user requirements.
Project Partners:
Amongst the 15 partners are e.g.:
- Technosite (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- LaCaixa (Spain)
- Höft & Wessel (Germany)
- BDigital – Barcelona Digital Technology Centre (Spain)
- AbilityNet (United Kingdom)
- SoVD – Sozialverband Deutschland – Landesverband Niedersachsen e.V. (Germany)
- FUB – Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (Italy)
- ITI – Information Technologies Institute (Greece)
- John Gill Technology Ltd (United Kingdom)
- SARL EGAL PLUS (France)
- PaderSprinter GmbH (Germany)
ATIS4All – Assistive Technologies and Inclusive Solutions for All
2011 - 2013
Project Number: FP7-270988 (FP7-CIP-ICT-PSP)
ATIS4all (Assistive Technologies and Inclusive Solutions for All) is a European Thematic Network that seeks to facilitate everyone's access to the most suitable AT or accessibility device and service according to their needs, preferences and contextual characteristics (e.g. ICT solution, environment constraints, user device, language, etc.). For this purpose, ATIS4all will start and maintain an open, collaborative portal offering reliable information on AT and inclusive products and services, as well as cutting-edge technological trends.
CURE takes part in this Thematic Network and contributes expertise and knowledge in the area of accessibility and usability for special user groups. Additionally CURE provides their contacts to create an active online community to enhance dialogue and to share information between users, researchers and developers.
Project Partners:
- Technosite (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- European Platform for Rehabilitytion (Belgium)
- Fundación Vodafone Espana (Spain)
- Employers' Forum on Disability (United Kingdom)
- ANDITEC (Portugal)
- European Disability Forum (Belgium)
- Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation (Spain)
- AGE - Platform Europe (Belgium)
- Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Institute of Informatics and Telematics (Greece)
- BrailleNet (France)
- Full Measure (United Kingdom)
- Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
- Ministerstvo vnitra CR (Czech Republic)
- AbilityNet (United Kingdom)
- National IT and Telecom Agency (Denmark)
- Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark)
- Central Remedial Clinic (Ireland)
- Work Research Centre (Ireland)
- Research in Motion (United Kingdom)
BEDMOND – Behavior pattern based assistant for Early Detection and Management of Neurodegenerative Diseases
2009 - 2012
Project Number: AAL-2008-1-026 (AAL JP)
The BEDMOND project aimed at developing an ICT-based system for an early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, focused on elderly people while living at home. With such an early detection health professionals can later on apply an early treatment which will help the elder to live longer in an independent way at home by delaying as long as possible Alzheimer’s disease appearance.
Within this project CURE analyzed the needs and wishes of health professionals for dementia diagnosis and identified, clarified and prioritized end-users’ needs (from elders and families) and engineering requirements (from local medical and/or social and/or research teams). In order to achieve a systematic improvement of the usability and the applicability of the BEDMOND interface in everyday life routines, CURE ensured continuous involvement of all end-users in the development process.
Project Partners:
- Fundación Robotiker (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Fundación Ingema (Spain)
- Bioingeniería Aragonesa (Spain)
- Austrian Research Centers (Austria)
- Meticube (Portugal)
CHRONIOUS – An Open, Ubiquitous and Adaptive Chronic Disease Management Platform for COPD and Renal Insufficiency
2008 - 2011
Project Number: FP7-216461 (FP7-ICT)
The CHRONIOUS project works on a telecare and decision support system for patients and healthcare professionals in the area of chronic diseases. The CHRONIOUS system addresses a smart and wearable sensory platform to monitor patients’ vital body parameters, context variables and patient activities (like drug intake and dietary habits). The system supports health care experts and patients by providing tools for decision support and by generating alerts and events based on gathered sensory data, ontology- and expert-systems.
CURE’s role in the project combined the execution of user requirement analysis, system specifications and the design and implementation of a mental support system within the CHRONIOUS intelligence. Based on user experience and contextual research methods CURE developed tools that act and react upon diverse and changing contextual variables in order to provide a comfortable environment for CHRONIOUS patients. CURE´s challenge was to invent ways (and tools) that create an ambitious and pleasant atmosphere according to the patients’ actual mood for a sustainable high living standard.
Project Partners (excerpt):
- TESAN S.p.A. (Coordinator, Italy)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)
- Universität Bremen (Germany)
- Link Consulting, Tecnologias de Informação, S.A. (Portugal)
- Fraunhofer (Germany)
- FORTH-BRI (Greece)
CompanionAble – Integrated Cognitive Assistive & Domotic Companion Robotic Systems for Ability & Security
2008 - 2011
Project Number: FP7-216487 (FP7-ICT)
CompanionAble addressed the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities. Prevalent among the elderly, chronic cognitive disabilities affect a rapidly increasing population group. Those people need support of carers and are at risk of social exclusion, a problem not well addressed by ICT technology yet. The project focused on combining the strengths of a mobile robotic companion with the advantages of a stationary smart home demonstrating how synergies between the two improve the care and the person's interaction with her/his assistive system significantly.
Within the project, CURE's focus lay on evaluating three defined scenarios: the support that can be provided by the smart home alone, by the robot companion alone, and by a combination of the two.
Project Partners:
Amongst the 19 partners were e.g.:
- University of Reading (Coordinator, United Kingdom)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Technical University of Ilmenau (Germany)
- University of A Coruna (Spain)
- MetraLabs (Spain)
- GET/INT (France)
- Austrian Research Centers (Austria)
- AKG (Austria)
- INGEMA (Spain)
CONSENSUS – 3G Mobile Context Sensitive Adaptability
2002 - 2004
Project Number: IST-32407
Consensus enables programmers to develop browser based applications for a variety of different mobile devices by the usage of only one development tool. The need to adapt applications manually to the different devices was minimized by this automation. Usability research and empirical studies focusing on the requirements of different mobile devices made sure that the usability of the resulting applications met high quality standards. In particular this project benefited from CURE's user studies, which led to the development of a style guide for mobile business applications, which was the basis for CONSENSUS's adaptation engine. CURE conducted field trials with the first applications developed with this development tool.
EDUCAT – Education Content Assembly Tool
2001 - 2003
Project Number: IST-29247
The Education Content Assembly Toolset (EduCAT) was designed to enable educators who do not necessarily have prior software development skills to create their own simulations and interactive educational applications. The toolset's strength is that it provides a very simple approach to multimedia programming which is also very powerful and extensible.
EMMUS – European MultiMedia Usability Services
1998 - 2000
Project Number: 28848 (Esprit)
In EMMUS we succeeded in combining Europe's leading usability organizations and multimedia producers in a joint network. Contents and services were developed to support the European MultiMedia industry in producing better and more usable systems.
eWALL - eWALL for Active Long Living
2013 - 2016
Project Number: FP7-610658 (FP7-ICT)
The eWALL project will develop a holistic infrastructure model that supports active and healthy ageing for older adults suffering from diseases like COPD and mild dementia. eWALL will be an affordable, easy-to-install prefabricated interactive wall that can be mounted on an existing wall and includes all the ICT technology needed to enable a number of services for older adults to cover the major ontologies of active and healthy ageing. The project will carry out high-risk and multi-disciplinary research and will have a large-scale demonstration for validating the concept with solid clinical evidence. This will include technical-, user- and legal-evaluation, to measure with advanced tools and methodologies the impact on the Quality of Life of older adults. The eWALL system will extend the state-of-the-art of assistive platforms and will significantly increase the independent living of older adults. The project will also perform socio-economic studies to deliver recommendations for the health sector that will result in mid- and long-term benefits for the sustainability of national health systems.
Within eWALL, CURE is responsible for leading the requirements analysis process, from the task of user profiling up to researching the field of ADL support technologies and driving the eWALL concept development. Further, CURE develops the evaluation framework, contributes to the scientific dissemination of the project and leads the demonstration activities in Austria.
Project Partners:
- AAU - Aalborg University (Coordinator, Denmark)
- HP - Hewlett Packard Italiana SRL (Italy)
- ENT - Ericsson Nikola Tesla D.D. (Croatia)
- RRD - Roessingh Research and Development BV (Netherlands)
- IRCCS - San Raffaele S.p.A (Italy)
- AIT - Research and Education Laboratory in Information Technologies (Greece)
- UPB - Universitatea Politehnica din Bucuresti (Romania)
- UKIM - Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (Republic of Macedonia)
- UOM - Javna Ustanova Univerzitet Crne Gore Podgorica (Centre for Telecommunications) (Montenegro)
- TUS - Technical University of Sofia (Bulgaria)
- UNIZG-FER - University of Zagreb (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing) (Croatia)
- STELAR - Stelar Security Technology Law Research UG (Germany)
FIRM
1999 - 2001
In this project public entities and industrial representations from Austria, Germany and Greece analyzed the possibilities to support European SMIs in founding new companies. Which kind of information do they need and how to minimize the bureaucratic effort? The project resulted in a prototype, which allowed a thorough assessment of what was possible. Furthermore the prototype showed which barriers are hard to take in terms of legal, organizational and cross cultural problems.
FoSIBLE – Fostering Social Interactions for a Better Life of the Elderly
2010 - 2013
Project Number: AAL-2009-2-135 (AAL JP)
The aim of FoSIBLE was to create and assess usable and affordable products and services for older adults with a focus on social networks. The solution envisioned centers around a TV based Social Media Center. An entertainment console and media center technologies were used to provide different communication, broadcasting and entertainment services in order to improve the social side of health. To enrich communication and emotional support a research focus has been on sensor-based haptic input and output devices based on game technologies and intelligent furniture.
CURE was involved in the project’s requirements analysis of elderly users that was conducted to center the development of the platform on the users’ needs from the very beginning. CURE also contributed to the development of minimal-invasive sensor technologies in combination with evaluation tools and took part in lab evaluation and usability testing.
Project Partners:
- University of Duisburg-Essen (Coordinator, Germany)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- University of Siegen (Germany)
- Fraunhofer Institute IMS (Germany)
- University of Technology of Troyes (France)
- AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (Austria)
- Mauser Care (Germany)
- Kaasa (Germany)
- Malakoff-Médéric Centre Les Arcades (France)
Hermes – Cognitive Care and Guidance for Active Aging
2008 - 2010
Project Number: FP7-216709 (FP7-ICT)
HERMES aimed to develop assistive technology for older people to reduce age-related decline of cognitive capabilities and assist the user where necessary in retrospective and prospective memory. Based on intelligent audio and visual processing and reasoning, the project resulted in a combination of a home-based and mobile device to support the user’s cognitive state and prevent cognitive decline. HERMES aimed specifically at supporting the decline in capabilities by using other functional cognitive skills and training these, thereby reducing the need for active care and support and substantially increasing the ability to cope with everyday life and to live independently.
The project was partially funded by the EU (total funding: € 2 820 000). As the project's Coordinator, CURE's responsibility was the successful delivery of the technology within time and budget and matching with user needs. Within the project, CURE ensured that the HERMES technology was aligned to the needs from end-users, in particular CURE’s user experience research and user assessment methods were used to perform detailed requirements analysis in the early phase of the project. Furthermore, CURE played a key role in the project in developing the HERMES user interface. CURE investigated the design of information retrieval for life events and developed an information architecture and user interface that effectively triggers and supports the human memory. Finally, CURE was responsible for the validity of the project’s results through field trial evaluations.
Project Partners:
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator, Austria)
- Norwegian Computing Center (Norsk Regnesentral) (Norway)
- Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany)
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (The Netherlands)
- Search Lab - Security Evaluation Analysis and Research Laboratory (Hungary)
- Sweden Connectivity (Sweden)
- INGEMA (Spain)
- IBM Haifa Research Labs (Israel)
- Bradford University (United Kingdom)
- AIT - Athens Information Technology (Greece)
- TXT E-Solutions (Italy)
LABORANOVA – Collaboration Environment for Strategic Innovation
2006 - 2009
Project Number: IST-035262
The concept of Laboranova was to enable knowledge workers to create, share, improve and evaluate ideas systematically across teams, networks, and companies, and thereby improving their innovation processes. Laboranova built technology supporting the three most important pillars in strategic innovation: ideation, connection and evaluation. In this project, CURE performed user studies and requirement analyses that led to realistic deployment scenarios and development that matches real user needs. User interface guidelines were developed to assist the development of a user-centered application interface for the complex Laboranova framework. Moreover, usability testing and evaluations were performed throughout Laboranova development.
Project Partners:
Amongst the 18 partners are e.g.:
- BIBA – Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik (Coordinator, Germany)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Danfoss (Denmark)
- FIAT / ISVOR (Italy)
- SAP (Germany)
- Université Paris IX Dauphine (France)
- Learning Lab Denmark (Denmark)
LIAISON – LocatIon BAsed ServiceS for the Enhancement of WOrking EnviroNment
2004 - 2008
Project Number: IST-511766
The LIAISON project turned emergent technologies, applications and services into actual business cases. It developed solutions that fulfill in a competitive manner the needs of workers in their daily life, for seamless and personalized location services across heterogeneous networks. To achieve this target, LIAISON integrated numerous existing standards and techniques, and brought a set of emerging underlying technologies to the required maturity for professional usage. It enhanced the systems’ capabilities through innovations resulting from EGNOS and Galileo signals as well as the newest telecom-techniques. A key basis of all solutions are location based services. Therefore a major goal was the preparation of the European market to LBS before the operational launch of the GALILEO services.
CURE was heavily involved in all the six business cases, which were developed during the project. A major focus lay on the social and organizational impacts of these solutions. CURE was responsible for the service assessment of the cases and ensured that the project considered users' needs for privacy and for security. CURE also assessed the solutions in terms of usability, ergonomics, and user experience.
Project Partners:
Amongst the 24 partners are e.g.:
- Alcatel Space (Coordinator, France)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- France Telecom (France)
- Sussex Police Authority (United Kingdom)
- Vodafone-Panafon S.A. (Greece)
- GeoConcept (France)
http://www.liaison-project.eu/index.html
MASELTOV – Mobile Assistance for Social Inclusion and Empowerment of Immigrants with Persuasive Learning Technologies and Social Network Services
2012 - 2014
Project Number: FP7-288587 (FP7-ICT)
MASELTOV recognizes the major risks for social exclusion of immigrants from the European information society and identifies the huge potential of mobile services for promoting integration and cultural diversity in Europe. Mobile persuasive assistance is crucial for more efficient and sustainable support of immigrants. The key objective of MASELTOV is to facilitate and foster local community building, raising consciousness and knowledge for the bridging of cultural differences.
MASELTOV realizes this project goal via the development of innovative social computing services that motivate and support informal learning for the appropriation of highly relevant daily skills. A mobile assistant embeds these novel services that address activities towards the social inclusion of immigrants in a persuasive and intuitive manner which is highlighted in MASELTOV with a representative application of beneficial information and learning services – such as ubiquitous language translation, navigation, administrative and emergency health services.
Project Partners:
- Joanneum Research (Coordinator, Austria)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Athens Information Technology (Greece)
- Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain)
- The Open University (United Kingdom)
- Coventry University (United Kingdom)
- TU Prague (Czech Republic)
- Telecom Italia (Italy)
- Fluidtime (Austria)
- Busuu (Spain)
- Fundeso (Spain)
- Danaida (Austria)
- Migrants’ Resource Centre (United Kingdom)
MAYPOLE
1997 - 1999
Project Number: 25425 (Esprit)
The Maypole project consortium studied local communities' communicational behavior. Based on these studies the partners developed first highly innovative concepts for a communication device for local communities. After thorough assessment of the concepts, prototypes were built and tested in field studies. For these trials children and their social networks were chosen as local test communities. Test beds were set up in Finland and Austria.
MINET – Measuring the Impossible
2006 - 2010
Project Number: 43297 (EU-NEST)
‘Measuring the Impossible’ dealt with the application of objective metrology to holistic quantities and qualities which are perceived and interpreted by the human brain and mind. Providing a means for reproducible measurement of parameters such as pleasure and pain has important implications in evaluating all kinds of products, services and conditions. MINET successfully further developed soft measurement science and established a viable European MtI community.
CURE’s role within MINET was manifold. CURE brought in user experience methods which range from the measurement of different user experience factors to the measurement of emotions and eye gaze patterns. Furthermore, CURE established a bridge between the multidisciplinary MINET consortium and the HCI-community aiming for a stronger exchange of ideas and views.
Project Partners:
- Stockholm University (Coordinator, Sweden)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)
- Unilever R&D (the Netherlands / United Kingdom)
- University of Genova (Italy)
- Wageningen UR (the Netherlands)
- Helsinki School of Economics (Finlands)
- Laboratory of Citizenship Sciences (Italy)
- University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
- SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden (Sweden)
- Technical University of Berlin (Germany)
- University of Mannheim (Germany)
- University of Haifa (Israel)
- Profactor GmbH (Austria)
- Tilburg University (the Netherlands)
- Fraunhofer Institut für Biomedizinische Technik (Germany)
- Technische Universität Dresden (Germany)
- University of Helsinki (Finland)
- Hammel Neurocentre (Denmark)
- Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Italy)
- Ircam (France)
MUSES – Multiplatform Usable Endpoint Security
2012 - 2015
Project Number: FP7-318508 (FP7-ICT)
The overall purpose of MUSES is to foster corporate security by reducing the risks introduced by user behavior. Data security and privacy are of fundamental importance to organizations, where they are defined and managed via Security Policies. Most security incidents are caused by organization insiders, either by their lack of knowledge or inadequate or malicious behavior. Nowadays, information is highly distributed amongst corporate servers, the cloud and multiple personal devices like PDAs, tablets and smart phones. MUSES will provide a device independent, user-centric and self-adaptive corporate security system, able to cope with the concept of seamless working experience on different devices.
During project development, metrics of usability, context risk evaluation, user current trust situation and device exposure level will be defined and several guidelines for design of secure applications, company policies and context-based security requirements will be produced. A real-time trust and risk analysis engine will also be developed with security mechanisms hard to compromise once installed on the target platforms.
Project Partners:
- S2 Grupo SL (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Universidad de Granada (Spain)
- Hamburger Informatik Technologie-Center HITEC e.V. (Germany)
- Université de Genève (Switzerland)
- WIND Telecomunicazioni SpA (Italy)
- TXT e-solutions SpA (Italy)
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
- Sweden Connectivity AB (Sweden)
OmniPaper – Smart Access to European Newspapers
2002 - 2004
Project Number: IST-32174
OmniPaper investigated methods for drastically enhancing multilingual access to distributed information resources in a self-learning environment. The OmniPaper prototype enabled users to search for and navigate through online news originating from a large number of digital European newspapers.
PEACOX – Persuasive advisor for CO2 reducing cross-model trip planning
2011 - 2014
Project Number: FP7-288466 (FP7-ICT)
In modern times increased mobility results in a strong environmental impact, particularly in urban areas. Personal transportation is one of the greatest contributors to CO2 emissions. Means to help people reduce their ecological impact are urgently needed. In response to this need, PEACOX provides travelers with a personalized multi-modal navigation tool that enables, helps and persuades users to travel in an environmentally conscious way. To convince users to make more sustainable travel choices PEACOX will enrich navigation systems with innovative approaches and features, such as an automated travel mode and a trip purpose detection, feedback on CO2 consumption, and persuasive interface strategies.
The system will be developed in two iterations following user-centered and agile design approaches. Extensive field trials in Vienna and Dublin will ensure high quality and impact of the developed system. The PEACOX consortium unites expertise in navigation systems, transportation sciences, environmental modeling, artificial intelligence, persuasive technology, human-computer interaction, and software development.
Project Partners:
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator, Austria)
- FLUIDTIME Data Services GmbH (Austria)
- TMX – Telematix Software a.s. (Czech Republic)
- ETHZ – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Switzerland)
- TCD – Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
- ICCS – National Technical University of Athens (Greece)
- ITS – ITS Vienna Region (Austria)
- TOMTOM INTERNATIONAL BV (The Netherlands)
http://www.project-peacox.eu/home/
PICOS – Privacy and Identity Management for Community Services
2008 - 2011
Project Number: FP7-215056
PICOS addressed the issue of trust, privacy and identity management of community services and applications on the internet and in mobile communication networks. The main focus of this project was placed upon community-supporting services and complex distributed service architectures. As a result, a state-of-the-art platform created interoperable, open, privacy-respecting identity and trust management tools that were used to construct community application prototypes by leading industry partners. Those were then evaluated by selected on-line communities for their usability, ergonomics, legal issues, trust and privacy.
In this project CURE was working on the identification of the key user groups and communities and analyzed the different attributes and
functions necessary to establish trust, identity and privacy in on-line interactions. CURE closely collaborated with end-users and
developed a comprehensive trial and assessment outline plan to determine the criteria for assessing the developed technology.
Project Partners:
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität (Coordinator, Germany)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Bristol (United Kingdom)
- Hewlett-Packard Centre de Competence France (France)
- Universidad de Málaga (Spain)
- Katholike Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
- IT-Objects GmbH (Germany)
- Atos Origin (Spain)
- T-Mobile International (Germany)
- Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (Germany)
- Brno University (Czech Republic)
PrimeLife – Privacy and Identity Management in Europe for Life
2008 - 2012
Project Number: FP7-216483
PrimeLife aimed at the protection and sustainment of life-long privacy in collaborative scenarios and virtual communities. Therefore the core privacy and trust issues had to be resolved in order to counter the trend to life-long personal data trails. PrimeLife was based on the PRIME project which had previously shown how privacy technologies can enable citizens to execute their legal rights to control personal information in on-line transactions. PrimeLife substantially advanced the state of the art in the areas of human computer interfaces, configurable policy languages, web service federations, infrastructures and privacy-enhancing cryptography. The adoption of the developed privacy technologies by the community was ensured by collaborating with Open Source communities and standardization bodies.
CURE contributed to the project in the field of human computer interaction with research, development and testing of user interface mockups and prototypes. Furthermore CURE was responsible for the design and the contribution of the HCI components for the Open Source initiative.
Project Partners:
Amongst the 15 partners are e.g.:
- IBM Research GmbH (Coordinator, Switzerland)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz (Germany)
- Technische Universität Dresden (Germany)
- Karlstads Universitet (Sweden)
- Europäisches Microsoft Innovations Center GmbH (Germany)
- SAP AG (Germany)
- Brown University (United States)
- Stichting Katholieke Universiteit Brabant (the Netherlands)
SeniorEngage – Virtual Network to Empower the Integration of Seniors into an Active Community in the Post-Retirement Years
2010 - 2012
Project Number: AAL-2009-2-004 (AAL JP)
Senior citizens, upon retirement from their working lives, often experience a tremendous sense of loss and social exclusion. SeniorEngage aimed to strengthen the social structure of older retired and semi-retired professionals by allowing them to continue to actively participate in community and contribute knowledge regardless of health conditions or physical impediments. Therefore, a web-based social network service (SNS) was planned, designed and created based on the specific needs of older adults to transfer the enormous knowledge of retired professionals to young professionals that are about to start their working life.
CURE's main responsibility was the interaction and graphical design of the SNS that has been created in an iterative user-centered way, including expert reviews and usability tests. Furthermore, CURE conducted an online survey and focus groups for the requirements analysis.
Project Partners:
- CIRC (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- MFKK (Hungary)
- Microlink (United Kingdom)
- Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
- Association of Care Giving Relatives of Jyväskylä (Finland)
SMILE – A Sign language and Multimedia based Interactive Language course for Deaf for the training of European written languages
1998 - 2000
Project Number: 1046
SMILE was created to support people suffering from hearing impairment in gaining full access to written information. For this Project CURE has been carrying out usability evaluations and learning validations for an e-learning software, which supports deaf people in acquiring and training written language skills (including e.g. video demonstrations of sign language). A longitudinal test set with several assessment points was developed. Studies were carried out in several European countries (Austria, Sweden, Scotland).
T&Tnet – Travel & Transport solutions through emotional-social NETworking
2012 - 2015
Project Number: AAL-2011-4-032 (AAL JP)
The T&Tnet project aims at providing personalized context-based multimodal and multinational social journey planning with affective capabilities and an easy to follow adaptive real time guidance making use of artificial reasoning based on an information manager (filtering and combining). This solution will allow older adults to carry out and solve movement tasks and problems independently. T&Tnet not only provides solutions helping seniors to get to a specific destination making use of different means of transport, but offers navigation/orientation support adapted to the user preferences in real time.
Within the T&Tnet project, CURE is involved in the requirements analysis procedure and lab and field evaluation studies defining methods and the evaluation setup to explore user experience and technology acceptance factors of navigation systems for senior citizens.
Project Partners:
- Ingeniería Y Soluciones Informáticas S.L. (Coordinator, Spain)
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
- Tellu AS (Norway)
- Karde AS (Norway)
- GeoImaging Ltd (Cyprus)
- InstitutoTecnológico de Aragón (Spain)
- SanterReplySpA con unicoAzionista (Italy)
- SeniornettNorge (Norway)
- Zaragoza City Council (Spain)
- Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris (France)
TACIT – Technologies Augmenting Clinical InsighT
2004 - 2006
Project Number: IST-507691
The vision of TACIT was to unlock the tacit knowledge of Europe's senior clinicians both by linguistically analyzed multimedia recording and by expert location and communications. TACIT combined this with explicit knowledge from clinical systems and research sources into a user friendly Clinical Expertise Browser. TACIT enabled expertise sharing within healthcare Communities of Practice with the goal to reduce clinical risk and improve the quality of service to patients. TACIT prototyped and piloted in cancer care where it supported the entire clinical process across primary and secondary care.
CURE brought two vital sets of skills to the project: firstly its expertise in knowledge management and secondly its strong experience in usability. CURE conducted the user and task analysis and produced the user requirements document. Later prototyping and quality assurance activities followed. CURE supported also the validation of the final prototype in the pilots.
UsabilityNet – Usability Support Network
2001 - 2003
Project Number: IST-29067
The objective of Usabilitynet was to promote usability, user-centered design and process improvement in Europe and also in other parts of the world.
http://www.usabilitynet.org/home.htm
uTRUSTit – Usable Trust in the Internet of Things
2010 - 2013
Project Number: FP7-258360 (FP7-ICT)
The main goal of uTRUSTit is the development of a secure, trustworthy, trusted, legally compliant and accessible prototype for the Internet of things. The prototype will provide user-feedback on security and trustworthiness of the Internet of things in a selected scenario setting. It will include measures for identity management, risk and policy compliance verification as well as trustworthy communication.
As project Coordinator CURE will take care of project management including project administration, internal communication, risk and opportunity management, reporting, and quality management. CURE tasks will focus on the definition of user scenarios and personas. Also CURE will establish mental models of trust. The goal of this task is to elicit users’ mental models of trust when using distributed and networked software systems and services. Initial mental models will be created based on observations of users while using selected technologies with follow-up interviews.
Project Partners:
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator, Austria)
- Norwegian Computing Center (Norsk Regnesentral) (Norway)
- Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany)
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (The Netherlands)
- Search Lab - Security Evaluation Analysis and Research Laboratory (Hungary)
- Sweden Connectivity (Sweden)
vAssist – Voice Controlled Assistive Care and Communication Services for the Home
2011 - 2014
Project Number: AAL-2010-3-106 (AAL JP)
The goal of the vAssist project is to provide specific voice controlled Home Care and Communication Services for two target groups of older persons: Seniors suffering from chronic diseases and persons suffering from (fine-) motor skill impairments. The main goal is the development of simplified and adapted interface variants for tele-medical and communication applications using multilingual natural speech interaction (and supportive graphical user interfaces where necessary). vAssist aims to enhance the perceived quality of healthcare services and to enable a reduction in the costs related to their production and delivery by achieving channel independence in the delivery of vAssist services, so that existing hardware and interfaces in the home of seniors can be used (i.e. PC, TV, smartphone, tablet PC).
Further, the vAssist consortium considers user, technical and economic constraints in a sound methodological setup throughout the whole project duration (from user requirements to field evaluation studies) following a User-Centered Market-Oriented Design process (UCMOD).
CURE coordinates the vAssist project, defines the methods and runs user requirements studies, supports the design of supportive graphical user interfaces and leads the evaluation studies (lab and field) of the natural language solution with senior persons focusing on the speech behavior of older adults, user experience aspects and technology acceptance measures.
Project Partners:
- CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator, Austria)
- Institut-Télécom Paris (France)
- Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Electronique et Electrotechnique (France)
- Integrazioni e Sistemi SpA (Italy)
- Shankaa (France)
- ASICA Électronique Industrielle (France)
- PL.O.T EDV-Planungs- und Handels GesmbH (Austria)
- Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris (France)
- EURAG Austria (Austria)
- MobyView (France)
WalkonWeb
2004 - 2007
Project Number: IST-004688
WalkOnWeb supported hikers by providing an integrated platform including hiking information on paths, landmarks, weather, etc.. The platform was not only based on a “desktop web solution” but also integrated other channels like maps on paper, PDAs and mobile phones. Both GEO-ontologies as well as GPS services were crucial pillars of the final prototype. GEO-ontologies enabled hikers to search for hiking paths by the paths' characteristics, which are derived from electronical maps.
CURE analyzed the needs of the various subgroups of hikers. These groups included families, hikers looking for adventures, elderly hikers, hikers with cultural interests, etc. Based on these finding user requirements were deduced. CURE was also responsible for the conceptual design of the various user interfaces. Tests in the field - also conducted by CURE - evaluated the project's outcomes.
WINPAR – Windows Based Parallel Computing
1997 - 1999
Project Number: 23516
The WINPAR consortium designed and implemented a toolkit for the development of parallel programs. CURE was responsible for the highly innovative user interface and visualization techniques.
Xaudio – Use of Broadcast Audio to Assist Mobile Internet Interaction
2002 - 2004
Project Number: IST-36022
Xaudio did the first steps towards a world where any radio broadcast of interest can be used to take the listener directly and automatically to a web page or a mobile service that is relevant to the listener's context of use.
CURE studied the user needs of different radio listeners and organized and conducted the first field trials with this new technology.