Elisa is a research fellow at the Faculty of Informatics at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, TI (Switzerland).

Her research focuses on the effect and the role of digital technology and online communication in human activities as well as investigating the socio-technical issues encountered.

Her research falls into two main areas:
(1)    Educational technology in informal, cultural and touristic locations, as well as formal settings, K13 schools and university. Digital artifacts and applications are designed and evaluated in line with constructionist thinking and the “learning by doing” approach.
(2)    Interactive media in public spaces for enhancing the access and sharing of online information and improving the communication and subsequent appeal of a cultural site or touristic location. In particular, rethinking the way people encounter digital information in community contexts and assessing whether these solutions support social activities and improve their experience.
From a technological perspective, her activities encompass the design and study of embedded and distributed interaction (non-traditional user interfaces by incorporating sensors, computation, and communication through everyday artifacts), Web and hypermedia (desktop model-based interaction) as well as mobile (portable and distributed interaction).
Indeed, her work revolves around:
(1)    Advancing the understanding of human communication practices in public (e.g. city square, train station) and semi-public places (e.g. schools, museums, hotels) by looking at the socio-technical issues created by the technology.
(2)    Designing methodologies for the creation and assessment of technological solutions, which include activity analysis, requirements elicitation, concept generation, prototyping, and user experience evaluation.
Looking at the complex interplay of mind, body and environment she merges the theoretical perspective within the design practice by developing concrete digital artefacts as well as by investigating their effect in real contexts of use. The understanding of the diverse elements of the user experience requires an interdisciplinary approach and the integration conceptual and practical instruments borrowed from social sciences, design, computer science, psychology etc. Her research produces findings that contribute to exploit the theoretical and methodological approaches for the design of technological solutions for individual as well as social activity in public and semi-public spaces.