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Driving and music listening are two inseparable everyday activities for millions of people today in the world. Considering the high correlation between music, mood and driving comfort and safety, it makes sense to use appropriate and intelligent music recommendations based on the mood of drivers and songs in the context of car driving. The objective of this paper is to present the project of a contextual moodbased music recommender system capable of regulating the driver's mood and trying to have a positive influence on her driving behaviour. Here we present the proof of concept of the system and describe the techniques and technologies that are part of it. Further possible future improvements on each of the building blocks are also presented.

Intelligent environments aim at supporting and assisting users in their daily activities. Their reliability, i.e., the capability of correctly accomplishing the intended tasks and of limiting or avoiding damage in case of malfunctions, is essential as for any user-facing technology. One aspect of reliability, often neglected, is guaranteeing the consistency between system operation and user expectations, so that users may build confidence over the correct behavior of the system and its reaction to their actions. The paper will review the literature concerning methodologies and tools that directly involve users and have been specifically applied or adopted for intelligent environments, throughout the entire design flow-from requirements gathering to interface design. The paper will then propose, building on top of the previous analysis, a set of guidelines that system designers should follow to ensure user confidence in their intelligent environments.

Empathizing with user, has been considered by many design researchers as one of the important factors that help to understand the final user's needs and wishes during the design process. Hence there are still many design projects that do not consider that important basis for design of products and services. In fact, if we look into the psychological process of the ways people communicate and build relationships, we can approve that empathy is fundamental and applying that might seem as an obvious matter in design process. This paper aims to be one another contribution to the field and seeks to emphasize the important role of the empathy in design process. In particular, this paper focus on developing empathy between developers and trial users through a participatory session. We believe this is relevant because we sought to bring the experience of using Internet of Things (IoT)-based devices by trial users in their real homes. It will illustrate the process and results of the participatory session conducted for a pilot project INTrEPID. The whole process of workshop has been built on the fundamental theories about empathy in psychology and the value of its application during the early phases of design process. We suggest to apply the Empathy workshop method when the project team and the final users meet each other, for understanding not only the user's experience and needs, but also the technical team's efforts. It is also proved a good way for fostering the creativity and involving all stakeholders into the design of new services.

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