Dr Lara Piccolo

Research Fellow

My research investigates the role and the design of technology, mainly social and ubiquitous, to engage people and communities with some global challenges like climate change, social inequalities and universal access to technology. I work with socio-technical and participatory approaches, directly involving people and communities in the design process.

My background is Computer Engineer and my PhD was obtained at UNICAMP, in Brazil, in 2015, in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) domain.
I have worked in this domain for more than 15 years, first in Brazil and since 2014 in the UK. Since then, my research has addressed energy conservation supported by a public and tangible feedback, smart meters, and social media; social media to promote community resilience in disasters; co-creation of chatbots for children's online safety and, most recently, strategies to fight misinformation spread online.

Back in Brazil, I worked for almost 10 years bridging academia, policymaking and industry in research projects mainly targeting digital inclusion of people with low literacy, sensory impairment, and energy literacy, also engaging people and communities with smart monitoring.

I am an IFIP TC13 representative and member of the Special Committee for Human-Computer Interaction at the Brazilian Computing Society (SBC).

Keywords

Community engagement, users engagement, social change, socially-aware design, motivation, social media, energy awareness, climate change

Publications

Menezes, Stefane Vieira and Piccolo, Lara ,(2023). O ensino de computaÃ§Ã£o para alÃ©m dos muros da escola : anÃ¡lise crÃtica dos caminhos no Brasil e no Reino Unido [Teaching computing beyond the school walls : a critical analysis of paths in Brazil and the United Kingdom]. Cadernos CEDES, 43(120), pp. 108â115.

Myers, Christina, Piccolo, Lara and Collins, Trevor ,(2023). Democratising Digital Educational Game Design for Social Change. Journal of Learning for Development, 10(1), pp. 55â74.

da Hora Rodrigues, Kamila Rios, de Almeida Neris, VÃ¢nia Paula, Piccolo, Lara and Masoodian, Masood ,(2022). Human-Centred Technology for Sustainable Development Goals - Workshop Results. In: INTERACT 2021 IFIP TC 13 Workshops, 30 Aug - 3 Sep 2021, Bari, Italy.

Assuncao, Willian G., Piccolo, Lara S. G. and Zaina, Luciana A. M. ,(2022). Considering emotions and contextual factors in music recommendation: a systematic literature review. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 81 pp. 8367â8407.

Piccolo, Lara S.G., Neris, Vania, da Silva Menezes, Luana and de Oliveira Neris, Luciano ,(2022). Internet of Things in Education for Sustainable Development. In: INTERACT 2021 IFIP TC 13 Workshops, 30 Aug - 3 Sep 2021, Bari, Italy.

Piccolo, Lara S. G., Neris, VÃ¢nia, Rodrigues, Kamila Rios and Masoodian, Masood ,(2021). Human-Centred Technology for Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and Opportunities. In: Ardito, Carmelo; Lanzilotti, Rosa; Malizia, Alessio and Petrie, Helen eds. Human-Computer-Interaction â INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 12936. Cham: Springer, pp. 553â557.

Piccolo, Lara, Blackwood, Azizah C., Farrell, Tracie and Mensio, Martino ,(2021). Agents for Fighting Misinformation Spread on Twitter: Design Challenges. In: Conversational User Interfaces CUI 2021, 27-29 Jul 2021, Online.

Piccolo, Lara S. G., Bertel, Diotima, Farrell, Tracie and Troullinou, Pinelopi ,(2021). Opinions, Intentions, Freedom of Expression, ... , and Other Human Aspects of Misinformation Online. In: CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 9-13 May 2021, Yokohama, Japan.

Piccolo, Lara, Troullinou, Pinelopi and Alani, Harith ,(2021). Chatbots to Support Children in Coping with Online Threats: Socio-technical Requirements. In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS â21), 28 Jun - Jul 2, [Virtual].

Piccolo, Lara, Puska, Alisson, Pereira, Roberto and Farrell, Tracie ,(2020). Pathway to a Human-Values Based Approach to Tackle Misinformation Online. In: HCI International 2020, 19-24 Jul 2020, Copenhagen.

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