Luca Sabatucci A retrospective analysis of an Ambient Assisted-Living project CNR-ICAR SE Seminars 12/06/2012, Palermo, Italy

1. The ACube Experience
A retrospective analysis of an Ambient
Assisted-Living project
Luca Sabatucci

2. The ACube Mission
• The project aimed at developing an advanced,
generic monitoring infrastructure for Ambient
Assisted Living,
• To realize a highly developed smart
environment as a support to medical and
assistance staff
• Exploiting low energy consumption wireless
networks of sensors and actuators.

4. Strategy
• Minimal Advance in the Technology
– The strength must be in the integration
• “the result will be more than the sum of
parts”
– Services must represent a real value for users

5. The Analysis of Requirements
• The core problem is not technological
• Central role of People
– Identify real needs and integrate them into the design.
– Users must easily push their preferences into the
system execution.
• AAL and Society
– Law compliance: effects of existing laws and new laws
trying to regulate this new reality
– Adaptability to the evolution of the context (needs
and organization changes).

6. Stakeholders
• The analysis team (Tropos + UCD)
• The technical team (7 research groups)
• Social Residence Managers
• Social Workers (caregivers, nurses, doctors)
• Politicians

7. Expectations and Risks
• Research Groups had own purposes
– Publications, Patents
• Local politicians wanted a ROI in terms of
publicity
• Managers wanted to improve services and
save money
• What about Caregivers? What did primary
users actually want?

8. Discovering Needs
If I’d asked my customers what they wanted,
they’d have said a faster horse.
Henry Ford

9. User-Centred Design Discipline
• To shape the form, the function and the behavior
of interactive products, creating user experience
• Understanding real people in the contexts where
they live and work
• Integrate user studies and technological
development
– by adopting creative and analytical methods,
– exploiting cultural values (i.e. empathy, intuitions,
subjectivity, synthesis, etc.)

10. User Study
• Business Golden Rule: If you want a user to
understand your product, you must first
understand the user.
• UCD seeks answers to:
– What is important to users
– The tasks users do, how frequently, and in what order
– The users’ work environment
– The users’ problems and constraints
– Users’ expectations in terms of functionality
– Output required & in what form
– How can the design of this ‘product’ facilitate users’
cognitive processes?

11. Methods

12. Participatory Design
• Requirements are not well-defined entities but
should be collaboratively negotiated during the
whole design life-cycle
• Requirements are constructions produced by a
number of actors (users, analysts, developers ,
designers) each acting in specific context

13. Strengths and Limits of UCD
Strengths Limits
• Engagement of users • Does not support
• Extracting Implicit traceability
Knowledge • Does not support
• Concrete representation of abstraction
the domain • Coverage problem
• Stories prioritize
requirements
13

14. The Tropos Methodology
An Overview
• Engineering Approach
• Goal-oriented design process,
• The focus is on capturing intentional and
strategic dependencies among actors of a
domain.
• Five phases: early/later requirements,
architecture, implementation and
deployment.
Giunchiglia et al. 2003. The Tropos Software Development Methodology: Processes,
Models and Diagrams. In Agent-Oriented Software Engineering III, Springer

15. Tropos and UCD:
a Promising Synergy
• Purpose:
– synergy without reducing advantages
• Enablers:
– Ground on information about people
– Similar “High Level” objectives (requirements)
– Similar Language (goal/need, actor/persona)
– Similar methodological approach (data exploration,
filtering)

16. The Process
• The design process is co-
evolutionary
• concept design,The process
technology
development and design process is co-
The user research
evolutionary since concept design,
are carried out in parallel and user
technology development
research are carried out in parallel
• they progressively converge process
so that each strand of the by
can inform, without
continuously comparing results
constraining, the others.
and retuning the the project evolves,
As process
• The process grounds onmore and more
the intersections between the three
strands become
frequent; they progressively
– Setting a common problem space
converge by continuously
– Sharing a vision on the solution
comparing results and retuning
the process.
– Evaluate from different perspectives

17. the sensor on the door
sends a signal to
Maria is leaving Sabrina’s PDA that
the room alerts with a vibration
8 Chiara Leonardi, Luca Sabatucci, Angelo Susi, Massimo Zancanaro
The
Restoration Maria is going upstairs in
room - order to reach her room.
RSA. 01:50 She falls in the staircase.
pm. Maria
is getting
up from
sofa.
Caregivers The camera
This latter goal is delegated to the ACube System actor via the goal delegations
are not
aware of
this event
identifies the
event and
sends signals
[identify a guest dismissing the group] and [receive alerts of relevant events]. These to caregivers’
ACube
A vibration alerts
Sabrina that PDA.
Maria’s leaving
goals are two requirements to be satisfied by the system that has to operationalize
POSSIBILE
When Sabrina and
Gianna ends their
CADUTA day shift, they must
them (means-ends relationships) via the plans [monitor patients] and [send alarms]
PDA displays
that an
SCALE 1°
PIANO
write a report, but
they find a already
compiled report
describing the event
respectively. unknown
occurred in the
Instance
person is fallen afternoon. They add
down in the information and
4. Validation. Two focus groups have been organized with stakeholders and the tech-
staircase
between
second and
validate the
information
automatically
collected by the
nical staff for validating the list of requirements produced in the previous phase. Due
third floor
The nurse, Gianna, receives this signal Video, audio sensors and PDA
automatically send collected data
system
and succour Maria. She notifies by PDA
the importance of this step for the topic of the paper, this is part is discussed in details
that she is taking the event in account.
to the system that builds the daily
report.
in the following subsection.
Field Data Consolidation
[missing
Collection details] [low quality
+ persona authoring model]
+ contextual inquiry + activity scenario authoring
[study complete OR [validation
insufficient resources] [new dimension] [validation success]
success]
Data Envisioning
Interpretation [new system
+ domain context analysis + Tropos late requirements aspect]
+ Tropos early requirements + envisioning scenarios
+ criticality identification
[validation
success]
REQUIREMENTS
Maria is in RSA since 3 months
and she never tried to escape.
After lunch, she leaves the
Fig. 1: An excerpt of the Tropos model for the nursing home.
group and decides to go back
her room, in the second floor.
She goes up the stairs and she
3.4falls down.
The validation phase
Maria is still conscious and asks
for caregivers help. Sabrina, full
After the preparation of the Tropos late requirement diagrams, and the corresponding
list time OSS, hears Maria’s call and phase. Simple visual scenarios were
of requirements, we started the validation
designed to make the list of stairs…
reaches her in the requirements more understandable by partners. To gener-
ate scenarios we imagined how the system could support personas to cope with prob-

18. ACube – some lessons learnt
• The Role of Humans and Communications
• Interpretation
• The Tacit Knowledge Dimension
• Handling Viewpoints
Sabatucci et al. "Epistemic Analysis" 18

19. ACube in a nutshell - Story 1
Interpretation
• Example of “diario” and “consegna”
• Frequent validations is a properly instrument
for the early discovering of ambiguities and
errors.
• The analysis improves by maintaining data, as
long as possible, in the same format in which
they arrive from the domain
Sabatucci et al. "Epistemic Analysis" 19

20. ACube in a nutshell – Story 2
Do not ask needs
• Ask preferences and “dreams”
• Lacking a way for representing users answers,
important information may being forgotten
• Importance of tracing, organizing and taking in
account information that have not a clear-cut
relevance at the moment of the interview.
Sabatucci et al. "Epistemic Analysis" 20

21. ACube in a nutshell – Story 3
Redundancy
• Example of “night as a critical moment”
• Different viewpoints are sometimes difficult to
conciliate
• The importance of exploring motivations
behind different perspectives over the domain
Sabatucci et al. "Epistemic Analysis" 21

22. Open Challenges and Future Directions

23. Challenge 1 – Multi-Disciplinary
Design passes between different
semantic communities
We need to
improve our
service..and
to decrease
costs
… we should improve our
algorithms and
infrastructures to
recognize events, We need to
situa ons, ac vi es.. assure pa ent
assistence,
support, Family, support,
privacy, … ..human
contact

24. Challenge 2 – Methodological
Integration
• Different Concepts
• Different instruments to approach the
problem
• Example of Ambiguity: a different perspective

25. Challenge 3 – Evaluation
• Process based on many quick iterations
• Frequent verifications and prototypes
• Solutions and system specifications are
collaboratively negotiated

26. Challenge 4 – System Evolution
USER LAW Technology
Detect Why it
Exploring
Change Happened?
Ha
pp en it
?
Wh ened
Why?
ed
pp
Ra onal behind
en
at ?
Wh
change When? What?
Ha
Wheel of
Iden fy Process Evolu on
Ar fact to
Filtering
Where
pp e it
Who?
?
change
ed
W lv e d
?
I nv
Ha her
ho ?
en
o
How?
W
is
Iden fy ac vi es
for change
How it
Happened?
Process of Evolu on Wheel of Evolu on