Cristina Gena

Stefania Brighenti, Federico Buratto, Fernando Vito Falcone et al.

This paper introduces the project Social Assistive Robotics for Autistic Children aimed at using robotic therapy for autism. The goal of the project is testing autistic children's interactions with the social robot NAO. In particular the robot will support the operators (psychologists, educators, speech therapists etc.) in their work. The innovative aspect of the project is that the children robot interaction will consider the children's emotions and specific features and the robot will adapt its behavior accordingly.

Federica Cena, Cristina Gena, Claudio Mattutino et al.

In this paper, we report on three experiments we have carried out in the context of the EMPATHY project, with the aim of helping users make better configuration choices in a smart home environment, and discuss our results. We found that there are psychological traits, such as Need for Cognition, which influence the way individuals tend to use recommendations, that there are non obvious relationships between the perceived usefulness of recommendations in different domains and individuals' ability to exploit suggestions on configuration choices, and that detailed, easy-to-understand security explanations are more persuasive than simple security warnings, when it comes to make decisions on the applicability of rules which might cause privacy and security risks.

Cristina Gena

User modeling has traditionally relied on inferring preferences, traits, or intents from observable behaviour. While effective in many adaptive systems, this paradigm treats behaviour as the primary object of modeling and leaves mental-state attribution implicit. This assumption becomes limiting in socially situated and longitudinal interaction, where behaviour must be interpreted in context and over time. We introduce mind modeling, a perspective in which user modeling is grounded in the explicit and revisable attribution of mental states, including beliefs, intentions, emotions, and knowledge. Drawing on Theory of Mind (ToM), this approach treats behaviour as evidence for hypotheses about internal states, supporting personalization that is more interpretable and coherent across interaction episodes. We present M3, a conceptual framework that integrates perception, mentalisation, and action within a unified structure, enabling the continuous update of mental-state hypotheses in embodied interaction. We further illustrate this perspective through an embodied interaction trace, providing an initial operationalization of mind modeling in practice.

Anna Ravera, Cristina Gena

Generative AI systems are transforming content creation, but their usability remains a key challenge. This paper examines usability factors such as user experience, transparency, control, and cognitive load. Common challenges include unpredictability and difficulties in fine-tuning outputs. We review evaluation metrics like efficiency, learnability, and satisfaction, highlighting best practices from various domains. Improving interpretability, intuitive interfaces, and user feedback can enhance usability, making generative AI more accessible and effective.

Cristina Gena, Federica Cena, Marco Botta et al.

This paper presents our first attempt to integrate user modeling features in social and affective robots. We propose a cloud-based architecture for modeling the user-robot interaction in order to re-use the approach with different kind of social robots.

Cristina Gena, Fabiana Vernero, Claudio Mattutino et al.

Interest in and development of touchless gestural interfaces has recently exploded, fueled by the diffusion of both commercial midair gesture platforms and public interactive displays. This paper focuses on an application based on Microsoft Kinect that allows students to browse a university website, hosted on a public display, through simple gestures. We present two empirical evaluations where we evaluated how users react to this new way of interaction. In addition to confirming the current lack of standards, our results provide some inspiration for the design of touchless interaction.

Cristina Gena, Claudio Mattutino, Davide Cellie et al.

This paper describes a Google Educator funded project devoted to the training of teachers (primary and secondary school) through an e-learning platform that will introduce them to educational robotics using Wolly, a social, educational and affective robot.