For a Human-Centered AI

SUPERSEDE – for the software of the future

March 8, 2017

Those of you who lose your patience in front of your PC or your smartphone because its software does not work properly will certainly be glad to learn that in the near future complaints and suggestions will not fall on deaf ears, but will be collected and forwarded directly to the engineers who developed the application, so that they can make any necessary changes.

Trento-based FBK coordinates the European project to develop software with users in a participatory way. The first working platform has been experimented in Trento. Industrial applications are expected to be developed at the end of the research program.

(v.l.) Those of you who lose your patience in front of your PC or your smartphone because its software does not work properly will certainly be glad to learn that in the near future complaints and suggestions will not fall on deaf ears, but will be collected and forwarded directly to the engineers who developed the application, so that they can make any necessary changes.

Developing software capable of meeting the real needs of users in a participatory approach is the goal of the SUPERSEDE scientific project, Coordinated at European level by Fondazione Bruno Kessler of Trento.

The first working prototype was tested at the FBK Povo facilities, during the meeting between the project partners earlier this year: Atos Spain, SA, Delta Informatica, SEnerCon GmbH, Siemens AG Oesterreich, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), University of Zurich (UZH), University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW).

Thanks to a computer platform, reports from users, collected through photos, messages and social networks as well, are processed and analyzed semi-automatically so that the developers can decide how to improve services and software applications. In the coming months, the platform will be validated by three companies, Atos, SEnerCom and Siemes (respectively for software in live webcasting for sports events, energy conservation, and access to Smart cities data) and, at the end of the project, in 2018, it should be applied on an industrial scale.

“The idea”, Anna Perini, a research with FBK’s Software Engineering Research Unit and coordinator of the SUPERSEDE project points out, “is to connect users of a software product with the people who developed it and thus enhance it, making it more suitable to users’ needs and easier to use. In SUPERSEDE we are developing new technological solutions that can help software engineers make better decisions, thanks to the availability of so-called big-data, specifically, large amounts of data on software use and feedback from users. ”

The project, started in 2015, has been funded with 3.2 million Euros by the European Union within the framework of the Horizon 2020 funding program for research and innovation.

 


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