Objective
The SUSTAINS project is aimed at developing and demonstrating a new software technology able to support service organisations, typically Public Administrations, in improving their relationships with users.
To this purpose, we address jointly the critical points of unsatisfactory work organisation and unsuitable user interaction means. Revising work organisation is necessary to isolate front-office activities and define better form and contents of the managed information. Studying new interfaces is necessary to help the wide class of persons that are unable to interact with present computer-assisted functions access services without involving human operators. Users, especially in the health care and assistance sectors, are often elderly or disabled people or people with low cultural disabled and education level, different mother-tongue.
SUSTAINS pursues five fundamental objectives:
- Identification and description of the front-office functions constitutes the first phase of the organisation re-engineering process. A graphic and descriptive activity representation model is introduced to separate front-office from back-office tasks, order front-office tasks and express task added values, choices of alternative directions, criteria for choosing the right direction. A proper computer-based tool is developed to support the model application methodology.
- After the front-office functions have been identified and described, they must be expressed in terms of user interaction steps. In the analogy with the previous phase, a user interaction path model and a methodology for its correct application are defined. The methodology starts from importing the front-office activity schemas and leads to identifying the elementary dialog steps on the basis of interaction branches, confluences, optionalities, reversibilities and, also, verifiability of the resulting information.
- Identification of user classes according to a set of parameters expressing user abilities and dialog difficulties is crucial for this project and for exploiting its results. The objective is pursued in two times: a preliminary analysis of user abilities is obtained from the literature at the beginning of the project, while a verified final user classification is foreseen as project result in conclusion of the SUSTAINS tools application and validation activities.
- An important project objective is construction and operation of an interface prototyping laboratory. During project deployment, the laboratory supports the realization of a sample of interaction steps in form of interface components. These constitute the first contents of a library from which complex interaction paths can be built by composition and concatenation for verification, validation and demonstration purposes. Interface development tool, interface component library and dialog path construction environment remain available for exploitation after project completion.
- The last objective is validating the project achievements (models, methodologies, support tools and development environment) with respect to significant real applications. In order to evaluate their effectiveness in revising existing service systems and in driving the construction of new applications, a reverse and a forward engineering pilot case are planned in Italy and in Sweden, respectively.
The partners' role are of four types: users representative of different levels of service organisation; user consultantsthat support users in adopting and experimenting the new technology; innovators being charged of studying new solutions for the faced problems; developers whose task is tools design, development, testing and installation.
The project results are exploitable in three directions : the users are mainly interested in improving service quality and user satisfaction by applying the proposed approach and extending it to all front-office activities; the user consultants intend to gain new business opportunities by proposing the adoption of this user-centered organisation and interaction paradigm; the developers will incorporate the resulting tools and development environments into their software offer, thus achieving competitive advantage in the public administrations market, but also in private offices such as banks and insurance companies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
- social sciences economics and business business and management innovation management
- social sciences political sciences public administration
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
00198 Roma
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.