## 2 The Smart Angel Project
### Analysis of the User Needs  
A user requirements analysis has been organized with the aim of focusing the specific problems the target users have to face every day and that can be supported by the Smart Angel system. Information has been collected mainly through interviews and direct observation involving both tutors and the target users from the user association partner in the project, CEPIM.  
All the interviews with the tutors were aimed at identifying the most important areas of weakness that the people they were following had to face in everyday life. Several meetings have been organized in the first four months of the project involving the tutors in charge of three different age groups:  
* Teenagers (14-18), who still attend school and do not yet have much autonomy, but are getting ready for it, they are learning orientation, use of money, specific routes in town to reach school, _etc._
* Young adults beginning an independent life (age 18-30). They are usually able to move independently, they can have a job and manage several leisure time activities by themselves. They cannot live completely on their own since they need caregivers support in some daily activities, for example, when handling money is involved, when they need to do some computations (e.g., computing food quantities based on the number of eaters), or for potentially dangerous activities (e.g., hanging cloths to dry outside the window).
* Adults who are already settled in their daily routine, which, usually, involves a certain degree of independence.  
During the requirement analysis collection, the target users have been personally involved through meetings and direct observation.  
Four young people with the Down syndrome between the age of 18 and 19 have been interviewed with the presence of their tutors. All of them were either finishing school or had just started a new job.  
They had different levels of autonomy: while two of them had a job, moved independently, performed little house works, _etc._, the other two were still very dependent on their families. During the interview, each one of them told us how they lived, what their job was, how they reached their job, if they went out with friends, _etc._  
A visit has been paid, for a whole afternoon, to a group of four young men (between 25 and 30) who were temporarily living in a supervised apartment. As part of their path towards independence, the user association organized periods of two weeks during which the four people with disability lived in the apartment, alternating with two weeks at home with their families. While living in the apartment, a caregiver was always present and helped the group to get organized; together they defined rules and a weekly planning of the housework where each person had his own responsibility. Specific routines and daily habits were created in order to help them organize their life at home. The four people all worked and were able to get the train and bus to go to work and come back home by themselves.  
While we were visiting them, they started the sequence of activities needed to prepare dinner. The menu had already been decided, two people were in charge of the shopping list: one checked what was already in the house and the other wrote the list. The caregiver was always present and active, he decided when it was time to write the list, helped them to compute the amount of food needed and told them when to go shopping. We went with them to the shops, where they were completely independent and mastered the needed activities as expected by their tutor.  
The analysis of the user needs identified several fields in which help was needed. Within the project, we decided to address two specific issues that had been recognized as general and recurring problems: urban mobility and time management.