Founded in 1222, Padua University (UNIPD) is one of Europe’s oldest universities. Today UNIPD counts over 2200 full-time professors and researchers. One of the most recent national evaluations (December 2016) confirmed UNIPD the first large university in Italy for research activity and scientific production. UNIPD participates in the project through its “HIT-Human Inspired Technologies Research Centre”. Established in 2013, the centre focuses on carrying out basic and applied scientific research, on offering high education programs (PhD, Post PhD), and on accomplishing knowledge and technological transfer in the interdisciplinary domain of the human interaction with technologies. The projects and activities managed by the centre benefit from the contribution of about 50 faculty members from different departments with excellent scientific background in areas such as cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, computer science, electronic engineering, computer graphics, architecture, mathematics, law, economics, anthropology and sociology. Their common research goals consist of designing, developing and testing new technology strongly inspired by human needs, limits, capabilities and desires. The group involved in CO-ADAPT has extensive experience in user research, cognitive ergonomics and ethnomethodological oriented studies. Their research activity concerns the study of mediated interaction in several situations and with different technologies, with methods centered on the analysis of action (discourse analysis, gesture analysis, User Interface Events) along with cognitive methods. It has a strong expertise in the analysis of user experience, guidelines and requirements description for different application based on final users’ needs, capacities and expectancies.
Our main tasks in CO-ADAPT and how we fit in
The group lead by Prof Luciano Gamberini and Prof Anna Spagnolli has important experience in work organisation and psychology, ergonomics, and usability. The group has conducted extensive research in the area of technology for the elderly. In CO-ADAPT the main roles will be:
- Leader of WP 2 Participatory Design and Usability, in particular 2.5 Design and Usability compliance of adaptive assembly line
- Responsible for ethics in particular identifying, addressing and monitoring ethical issues T2.6 and T8.4
- Contributing to design and implement the eye tracking techniques for detecting cognitive load in the adaptive assembly line workstation (T3.2)
- Leading the evaluation of the Adaptive Assembly Line Station T6.2