End User Development in the IoT: a Semantic Approach

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, nowadays, a well recognized paradigm. In this field, End User Development (EUD) is a promising approach that allows users to program their devices and services. The representation models adopted by contemporary EUD interfaces, however, are often highly technology-dependent, and the interaction between users and the IoT ecosystem is put to a hard test. The goal of my research is to explore new approaches and tools for helping end-users to program their technological devices and services. For this purpose, I proposed EUPont, an ontological model able to represent abstract and technology independent trigger-action rules, that can be adapted to different contextual situations. EUPont has been evaluated in terms of understandability, completeness, and usefulness. Currently, I am using the semantic features of the model in different research projects, e.g., to optimize the layout of EUD interfaces, and to design a recommender system of trigger-action rules. Preliminary results are promising, and confirm the benefit of using the semantic information of EUPont for helping end-users to better deal with the forthcoming IoT world.