Francesca Fracasso [B.S. 2007 in Psychology, M.S. 2011 in Psychology, PhD 2015 in Psychology and Cognitive Science] is a research scientist since July 2016.
I started my collaboration with CNR in 2010 with an internship on Social Psychology. Subsequently, I have collaborated in different projects of the PST Lab, being involved in several national and international research projects for AAL and ICT for Active Ageing.
Specifically, I took part in the identification and analysis of psychological variables relevant for the assessment of crisis manager decision-making in the PANDORA project. I have been involved as major contributor in the design and implementation of the user evaluation for GiraffPlus, and worked in the SpeakyAcutattile project (Italian MIUR Project) contributing to the definition of the evaluation protocol, the implementation of the evaluation sessions and the synthesis of results.
Since November 2015 to May 2016 I have been visiting scholar (supported by the funding program "Torno Subito" of Regione Lazio) at the Assistive Robotics Lab of the BioRobotics Institute - Scuola Superiore S. Anna, collaborating in ROBOT-ERA project and improving my knowledge on the usage of observational methods in Human-Robot Interaction.
I have been involved in different AAL projects, such as SpONSOR, MAESTRO and, currently, TV-AssistDem, working in the organization of focus groups, definition of evaluation protocols, results analysis and user requirements definition.
During my PhD I consolidated my knowledge on analysis of psychological individual differences by using physiological indexes (EEG, ERPs, ECG and EDA). Specifically I deepened the study of social influence by investigating cortical responses and behavioral modulation to external feedback by comparing different sources, humans and artificial agents. Indeed, my research activities span over psycho-physiological evaluation, qualitative and quantitative methods for user evaluation, long-term assessment of user interaction with innovative technologies as social agents (like robots and / or intelligent systems).
At present, the focus of my activities is on studying usability, acceptance, users satisfaction as well as the impact of user experience on systems’ design by mixing different type of methods from self-report measures and observational methods, to physiological indexes.
