Gianluca Schiavo

FBK - Bruno Kessler Foundation

Via Sommarive, 18. Trento - Italy 🇮🇹

I am a User Experience (Ux) researcher with a background in psychology, currently researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler – FBK. I received my PhD in Cognitive Science from CIMeC – Center for Mind/Brain Science – University of Trento (Italy) and my MSc in Experimental Psychology from the University of Padova (Italy).

My research centers on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on the design, development, and evaluation of collaborative, social, and accessible technologies.

At present, my research focuses on the integration of HCI and artificial intelligence to explore critical issues surrounding AI literacy and human-AI interaction. As our society becomes increasingly reliant on AI-enabled systems, it is crucial to investigate how individuals perceive, trust, and interact with these systems. My research aims to develop innovative AI-enabled technologies that promote human learning, equity, and social inclusion.

selected publications

Conference

AI Education from the Educator’s Perspective: Best Practices for an Inclusive AI Curriculum for Middle School

Gibellini, Giorgia, Fabretti, Valeria, and Schiavo, Gianluca

Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2023

Abs

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications have a strong impact on people’s lives worldwide. Therefore, an increasing number of professionals and academics are focusing on the development of AI education programs for K-12. Part of these programs is developed for formal educational settings, such as school classrooms, which are complex systems with several variables interwoven. The current study concentrates on the teachers’ perspective on the implementation of an AI education curriculum for middle schools located in disadvantaged areas of Europe. Given these premises, a particular focus is devoted to how AI education can foster inclusion and be more accessible. Feedback was gathered through 582 logbooks provided by educators, and an international focus group conducted at the end of the curriculum implementation. This information helped to understand educators’ points of view on the AI curriculum, investigating how these topics can stimulate reflections around inclusion and diversity.
Conference

AI Education from the Educator’s Perspective: Best Practices for an Inclusive AI Curriculum for Middle School

Polak, Sara, Schiavo, Gianluca, and Zancanaro, Massimo

Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2023

Abs

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications have a strong impact on people’s lives worldwide. Therefore, an increasing number of professionals and academics are focusing on the development of AI education programs for K-12. Part of these programs is developed for formal educational settings, such as school classrooms, which are complex systems with several variables interwoven. The current study concentrates on the teachers’ perspective on the implementation of an AI education curriculum for middle schools located in disadvantaged areas of Europe. Given these premises, a particular focus is devoted to how AI education can foster inclusion and be more accessible. Feedback was gathered through 582 logbooks provided by educators, and an international focus group conducted at the end of the curriculum implementation. This information helped to understand educators’ points of view on the AI curriculum, investigating how these topics can stimulate reflections around inclusion and diversity.
Conference

Teachers’ Perspective on Artificial Intelligence Education: an Initial Investigation

Polak, Sara, Schiavo, Gianluca, and Zancanaro, Massimo

Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2022

Abs

Learning about Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a young age can help students become competent citizens able to move through our increasingly digital world with confidence and responsibility. This contribution presents a preliminary investigation in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and Romania to understand middle school teachers’ perspective on how to best teach digital competencies for AI. It uses the Will, Skill, Tool model as a theoretical lens, and it aims to inform the design of educational content and online platforms to enable teachers to integrate AI education into their classroom. Through a human-centred design process – including focus groups and a survey – needs and requirements were identified for a supportive online educational platform that aids teachers in AI education. The research results showed a positive attitude towards AI education and high motivation to introduce AI-related content at school, which translates to a positive Will factor. Regarding the Skill factor, teachers seem to have a basic level of digital skills but low AI-related skills. No significant problems emerged regarding the availability of resources, but further research investigating whether the Tool factor is accounted for would be desirable. Based on the results, six design implications for a web-based educational platform on AI have been formulated: (i) provide the required basics; (ii) make it relevant; (iii) make it interactive and collaborative; (iv) keep everyone in the loop; (v) make it accessible; (vi) motivate the user. These implications are further discussed to extend computational thinking frameworks to incorporate AI-related concepts and perspectives.
Conference

From Sustainable Mobility to Good Deeds: Supporting School Participation during COVID-19 Emergency through a Playful Education Platform

Marconi, A., Schiavo, G., Massa, P., Mencarini, E., and Deppieri, G.

Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2021 2021

Abs

The COVID-19 emergency has posed many challenges to the worldwide school system leading to school closures and massive adoption of distance education. These events affected not only the way education is delivered but also the overall school community’s wellbeing and cohesion. In this paper, we present a playful education platform originally designed to promote sustainable mobility in schools that has been adapted to support distance learning and community engagement during the health emergency. In the original version of the platform, the home-school distances traveled by students with sustainable means contributed to the advancement of the whole class in a collective virtual trip associated with playful learning material. Conversely, in a revised version of the platform adapted to the new context, students could advance in the virtual trip by reporting the good deeds performed at home. Findings from 161 questionnaires completed by teachers, families, and students, as well as results from online workshops with students, and the analysis of log files at the end of the school year revealed the opportunities and limitations of converting a playful activity conceived for being experienced in class into an online activity to be completed at home. The results show that the adapted version contributed to the school community cohesion and provided a positive experience to all its members, even though it was not able to completely overcome the generalized feeling of isolation. This paper contributes to understanding the social value of collaborative and playful digital activities that involve the entire school community, showing how technology can impact education and support communities in times of crisis. © 2021 Owner/Author.
Journal

Attention-driven read-aloud technology increases reading comprehension in children with reading disabilities

Schiavo, G., Mana, N., Mich, O., Zancanaro, M., and Job, R.

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 2021

Abs

The paper presents the design of an assistive reading tool that integrates read-aloud technology with eye tracking to regulate the speed of reading and support struggling readers in following the text while listening to it. The paper describes the design rationale of this approach, following the theory of auditory–visual integration, in terms of an automatic self-adaptable technique based on the reader’s gaze that provides an individualized interaction experience. This tool has been assessed in a controlled experiment with 20 children (aged 8–10 years) with a diagnosis of dyslexia and a control group of 20 children with typical reading abilities. The results show that children with reading difficulties improved their comprehension scores by 24% measured on a standardized instrument for the assessment of reading comprehension and that children with more inaccurate reading (N = 9) tended to benefit more. The findings are discussed in terms of a better integration between audio and visual text information, paving the way to improve standard read-aloud technology with gaze-contingency and self-adaptable techniques to personalize the reading experience. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Conference

A walk on the child side: Investigating parents’ and children’s experience and perspective on mobile technology for outdoor child independent mobility

Ferron, M., Leonardi, C., Massa, P., Schiavo, G., Murphy, A.L., and Farella, E.

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings 2019

Abs

Technology increasingly offers parents opportunities to monitor children, reshaping the way control and autonomy are negotiated within families. This paper investigates the views of parents and primary school children on mobile technology designed to support child independent mobility in the context of the local walking school buses. Based on a school-year long field study, we report findings on children’s and parents’ experience with proximity detection devices. The results provide insights into how the parents and children accepted and socially appropriated the technology into the walking school bus activity, shedding light on the way they understand and conceptualize a technology that collects data on children’s proximity to the volunteers’ smartphone. We discuss parents’ needs and concerns around monitoring technologies and the related challenges in terms of trust-control balance. These insights are elaborated to inform the future design of technology for child independent mobility. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
Journal

(Non-)Participation in deliberation at work: a case study of online participative decision-making

Schiavo, G., Villafiorita, A., and Zancanaro, M.

New Technology, Work and Employment 2019

Abs

Social media are implemented by organisations to enhance productivity and knowledge sharing among employees, but they can also support group deliberation and employee voice. This paper presents a case study of an online deliberation initiative involving the discussion of a contentious internal policy within an organisation of around 550 knowledge workers. The deliberation process lasted 5 weeks and actively involved 167 employees. Different sources of information (user interaction logs, activity patterns, questionnaire responses) were analysed to investigate the impact of participation, or non-participation, on the level of satisfaction with the deliberation, and on the understanding of the issue discussed. The findings suggest that (1) interest is a driver for participation, but it does not explain active participation, (2) participation, either active or passive, positively influences the understanding of the issue and (3) satisfaction with the outcome is not related to participation, but it may support participation in future initiatives. © 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Conference

Weigh it and share it! Crowdsourcing for pro-environmental data collection

Schiavo, G., Leonardi, C., Pasolli, M., Sarti, S., and Zancanaro, M.

Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, MobileHCI 2017 2017

Abs

Crowdsourcing for addressing environmental challenges is a promising area in HCI research. This work investigates participation in a crowdsourcing initiative that combined a social-purpose activity with the interest of a company to crowdsource a labour-intensive task. The initiative was based on the deployment of a mobile application for pro-environmental data collection, namely collecting data about weight and type of product packaging. We report the results of a 9-month study conducted within a living lab that involved 96 customers of a large retail store. The analysis of usage logs and patterns of behaviour show different user categories: constant, sprinter and casual users. A survey was conducted to compare those categories as far as demographics, personality traits and usability metrics are concerned. Ten follow-up interviews further investigated motivations behind different usage patterns. The results provide insights on different types of contributors, reporting evidence on what motivated committed and less committed participants.
Journal

Influencing Participation in Group Brainstorming Through Ambient Intelligence

Schiavo, G., Cappelletti, A., Mencarini, E., Stock, O., and Zancanaro, M.

International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 2016

Abs

Drawing on concepts from theories on persuasion, social psychology, and philosophy of language, this article presents the design of an ambient persuasive system that acts as an automatic facilitator by supporting a balanced flow of communication in group conversational activity. The system includes two main components: (a) a context-awareness system that monitors group member non-verbal behavior, and (b) a visualization component that promotes balanced participation, providing targeted directives to participants through peripheral displays. In two empirical studies, a strategy for influencing participant social dynamics based on subtle directives in the form of aesthetically pleasant visual animations was assessed. The findings provide insight on the effect, the acceptability, and the perceived influence of subtle peripheral persuasive messages for ambient displays. The studies indicate that when the participants understand the message intention, the subtle directives have a positive influence on group behavior, and are considered more appealing and less intrusive than overt, language-based messages. Furthermore, it was found that personality traits influenced attitudes towards the system. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.