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Highlights • Investigate whether a high-level representation can help end-user better create trigger-action rules in the IoT. • Present EUPOnt, a high-level semantic model for end-user development in the IoT. • Propose an end-user development platform to execute high-level rules. • Evaluate the suitability of the EUPont approach with a 30-people user study. Abstract Various programming environments for End-User Development (EUD) allow the composition of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, i.e., connections between IoT objects to personalize their joint behavior. These environments, however, only support a one-to-one mapping between pairs of object instances, and adopt a low level of abstraction that forces users to be aware of every single technology they may encounter in their applications. As a consequence, numerous open questions remain: would a "higher level" of abstraction help users creating their IoT applications more effectively and efficiently compared with the contemporary low-level representation? Which representation would users prefer? How high-level IoT applications could be actually executed? To answer these questions, we introduce EUPont, a high-level semantic model for EUD in the IoT. EUPont allows the creation of high-level IoT applications, able to adapt to different contextual situations. By integrating the ontology in the architecture of an EUD platform, we demonstrate how the semantic capabilities of the model allow the execution of high-level IoT applications. Furthermore, we evaluate the approach in a user study with 30 participants, by comparing a Web interface for composing IoT applications powered by EUPont with the one employed by a widely used EUD platform. Results show that the high-level approach is understandable, and it allows users to create IoT applications more correctly and quickly than contemporary solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing complexity of the new breed of distributed intelligent systems, such as the Internet of Things, which require a diversity of languages and protocols, can only be tamed with design and programming best practices. Interest is also growing for including the human factor, as advocated by the ambient intelligence (AmI) research field, whose focus is on transparently and intelligently supporting people. These new design methodologies are increasingly needed in the toolbox of new electronic and computer engineers, and teaching strategies should be devised that allow students to acquire a systems-level view instead of getting lost in technology-oriented approaches. This paper describes a study carried out over two academic years, in a course in AmI at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. In the course, a project-based learning approach was adopted, in which students design and prototype an AmI system, and their progress is closely monitored throughout the semester. This paper presents the learning goals and teaching strategies, analyzes the learning outcomes from the qualitative and quantitative points of view, and highlights the lessons learned in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Propose a literature programming approach for prototyping Internet-of-Things systems. • Present the design and implementation of the IoT notebook, together with its novel features and architecture. • Evaluate the IoT notebook in an exploratory user study with 13 novice IoT developers working for a large IT company. Computational notebooks create narratives that consolidate text, executable code, and visualizations in a single document. They are widely used in data science, enabling data scientists to accurately document and execute the steps of their analyses in an exploratory and iterative manner. Prototyping Internet of Things (IoT) systems is also complex because of IoT heterogeneous and interconnected nature. Indeed, IoT system prototyping spans multiple development and execution environments, and developers, besides focusing on the code, are required to configure various devices. To ascertain if and how computational notebooks' capabilities might be useful in the IoT scenario, this work presents an IoT-tailored notebook architecture aimed at helping developers build and share a computational narrative around the prototyping of IoT systems. To that end, we propose the concept of "IoT notebook", for which we analyze the required features and present its first implementation. We evaluate our proposal by conducting an exploratory user study among non-expert IoT developers working in a large IT company. Finally, we point out the potential of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]