Dimitra Chasanidou

Tourists responses to mobile augmented reality travel guides

This research presents a mobile augmented reality (MAR) travel guide, named CorfuAR, which supports personalized recommendations. We report the development process and devise a theoretical model that explores the adoption of MAR applications through their emotional impact. A field study on Corfu visitors ( n = 105 ) shows that the functional properties of CorfuAR evoke feelings of pleasure and arousal, which, in turn, influence the behavioral intention of using it. This is the first study that empirically validates the relation between functional system properties, user emotions, and adoption behavior. The paper discusses also the theoretical and managerial implications of our study.

Design Thinking Methods and Tools for Innovation

Design thinking (DT) is regarded as a system of three overlapping spaces—viability, desirability, and feasibility—where innovation increases when all three perspectives are addressed. Understanding how innovation within teams can be supported by DT methods and tools captivates the interest of business communities. This paper aims to examine how DT methods and tools foster innovation in teams. A case study approach, based on two workshops, examined three DT methods with a software tool. The findings support the use of DT methods and tools as a way of incubating ideas and creating innovative solutions within teams when team collaboration and software limitations are balanced. The paper proposes guidelines for utilizing DT methods and tools in innovation projects.

Comparative Analysis of Content-Based and Context-Based Similarity on Musical Data

Similarity measurement between two musical pieces is a hard problem. Humans perceive such similarity by employing a large amount of contextually semantic information. Commonly used content-based me-thodologies rely on information that includes little or no semantic information, and thus are reaching a performance “upper bound”. Recent research pertaining to contextual information assigned as free-form text (tags) in social networking services has indicated tags to be highly effective in improving the accuracy of music similarity. In this paper, we perform a large scale (20k real music data) similarity measurement using mainstream content and context methodologies. In addition, we test the accuracy of the examined methodologies against not only objective metadata but real-life user listening data as well. Experimental results illustrate the conditionally substantial gains of the context-based methodologies and a not so close match these methods with the real user listening data similarity.

Audio augmented reality in public transport for exploring tourist sites.

Audio augmented reality (AR) has a long research tradition in the tourism industry. Audio AR tour guides for urban environments provide location-based, auditory information about nearby sights, minimising distractions from interacting with mobile devices and enabling users to focus on their new surroundings. In this work, we present the design, development, and usability evaluation of AudioTransit, an audio AR tour guide using the public transport network for exploring urban tourist sites with which we investigate the design and implementation of audio AR systems in tourism. Overall, the study indicates very good usability and an altogether positive acceptance of the concept of audio AR in public transport for tourism purposes.

Exploring employee interactions and quality of contributions in intra-organisational innovation platforms

This study builds on the innovation management and organizational knowledge networks to examine the user interactions in an intra‐organizational innovation platform of a Norwegian telecommunications operator, as well as the influence of user interactions on idea development. Although current studies mainly focus on user interactions and idea quality in innovation processes, little attention has been paid to the layered nature of user interactions that impact on idea development. Data from an intra‐organizational innovation platform, called Explorathon, was used in an exploratory study, with a mixed‐methods approach. For 10 days, 3200 employees posted 390 ideas, with 1435 comments. Results show that employees communicated through the innovation platform with 11 interaction types, eight contribution types and three collaboration types. The findings demonstrate that diverse platform interactions coexist and have a diverse impact on ideas. The authors suggest three types of contribution qualities—passive, efficient and balanced—that reflect the degree of meaningful interactions around an idea. The contribution qualities are only indicative of the content of interactions and they complement other evaluation metrics of the innovation platform. The findings also suggest that the user roles of idea contributors and platform moderators or facilitators are significant in maintaining interactions and weighted contributions over time. The study has implications both for research and practice.

Involving Users in the Design of Sharing Economy Services

Involving users in the design of sharing economy services is important to realize the expected growth in this market. However, such involvement may be challenging due to the complexity and networked character of the service context. We present a case study showing how users’ online feedback on novel design concepts may represent a viable approach to user involvement. In particular, the feedback provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of proposed concepts as well as suggestions of relevance to the subsequent design process. On the basis of the case study, lessons learnt are discussed, as is needed future research.

Let’s DEsign for MOtivation (DEMO)

Design for motivation can be defined as a “design practice focused on the activation of human motives, with short or long-term effects, to perform an action” in a context. The paper proposes and develops a design tool called DEMO (DEsign for MOtivation) that aims to address motivation in innovation communities. The DEMO tool is theoretically grounded in motivation theories and based on existing game-like approaches for the development of motivational concepts. The tool incorporates gamification elements, design elements and targets to support multidisciplinary teams in designing for motivation. One application area of the tool is in innovation communities where the design to support user participation and contribution is a complex task, while there is limited understanding how to practically apply motivation. An expert usability evaluation reflected a positive overall experience with the tool. The contribution of this paper lies in its description of the tool and its report on the usability evaluation. Future research in the field should focus on the application of the design tool with various methods in diverse cases.