João Falcão e Cunha

Designing Multi-Interface Service Experiences

This article introduces the Service Experience Blueprint (SEB), a multidisciplinary method for designing multi-interface service experiences, and illustrates its application with two case examples of the redesign of the service experiences of a multichannel bank. The SEB method starts by studying the customer service experience to understand customer experience requirements for different service activities and how these requirements can be satisfied through alternative service interfaces. Based on this analysis, the multi-interface service is designed to allocate service activities to the interfaces best suited to provide the desired experience, defining channel specialization and integration. Finally, with the SEB method each service interface is designed to best leverage its unique capabilities and guide customers to other service interfaces whenever that interface better enhances the overall customer experience. By incorporating the contributions of service management, interaction design, and software engineering, the SEB method is a multidisciplinary tool and terminology for service design.

Improving satisfaction with bank service offerings: measuring the contribution of each delivery channel

This article presents the results of a qualitative study of a Portuguese bank regarding customer use of Internet banking integrated in a multi‐channel offering that includes high street branches, telephone banking, and automatic teller machines. The results show that performance evaluation is a key factor influencing channel use. Customers tend to use the different service delivery systems in a complementary way, taking into account their assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Customer characteristics, and the type of financial operation, are also identified as important factors influencing this process. These results indicate that, in a multi‐channel context, customer satisfaction with Internet services depends not only on the performance of this channel in isolation, but also on how it contributes to satisfaction with the overall service offering.

Towards a UML profile for interaction design: the wisdom approach

The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, its support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. There is a common misconception that the same models developed to support the design of the application internals are also adequate to support interaction design, leveraging the usability aspects of the applications. In this paper we identify and discuss the major problems using the UML to document, specify and design interactive systems. Here we propose a UML profile for interactive systems development that leverages on human-computer interaction domain knowledge under the common notation and semantics of the UML. Our proposal integrates with existing object-oriented software engineering best practice, fostering coevolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction.

Interactive Systems. Design, Specification, and Verification

The focus of our paper is on managing and representing the huge amount of performance data coming from quantitative usability studies which are considered an important source needed to specify usability problems. The developed RealEYES-iAnalyzer is a tool which supports the evaluator of an interactive system by automatic data-processing and provides an expressive and effective data-playback. We carried out an empirical study with 36 test participants using the RealEYES-iAnalyzer during a web-browsing session. The measurement results show different patterns of mouse-/gaze behaviour and allowed us to draw hypotheses about the phenomenology of interaction problems.

Wisdom: A Software Engineering Method for Small Software Development Companies

Wisdom is a new software engineering method addressing the specific needs of small teams that develop and maintain interactive systems. Because Wisdom defines a process, notation, and project philosophy, it can smoothly be applied in small companies leveraging on their communication, speed, and flexibility.

Wisdom: a UML based architecture for interactive systems

The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, its support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. In this paper we discuss and identify the major problems using the UML framework for interactive system development, specifically, in what concerns the architectural issues. Here we present a conceptual architectural model that expands the analysis framework of the Unified Process and the UML profile for software development processes. Our proposal leverages on user-interface domain knowledge, fostering coevolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction, under the common notation and semantics of the UML.

Genetic algorithms for the bus driver scheduling problem: a case study

This paper describes an application of genetic algorithms to the bus driver scheduling problem. The application of genetic algorithms extends the traditional approach of Set Covering/Set Partitioning formulations, allowing the simultaneous consideration of several complex criteria. The genetic algorithm is integrated in a DSS but can be used as a very interactive tool or a stand-alone application. It incorporates the users knowledge in a quite natural way and produces solutions that are almost directly implemented by the transport companies in their operational planning processes. Computational results with airline and bus crew scheduling problems from real world companies are presented and discussed.

Passenger Journey Destination Estimation From Automated Fare Collection System Data Using Spatial Validation

A methodology for estimating the destination of passenger journeys from automated fare collection (AFC) system data is described. It proposes new spatial validation features to increase the accuracy of destination inference results and to verify key assumptions present in previous origin-destination estimation literature. The methodology applies to entry-only system configurations combined with distance-based fare structures, and it aims to enhance raw AFC system data with the destination of individual journeys. This paper describes an algorithm developed to implement the methodology and the results from its application to bus service data from Porto. The data relate to an AFC system integrated with an automatic vehicle location system that records a transaction for each passenger boarding a bus, containing attributes regarding the route, the vehicle, and the travel card used, along with the time and the location where the journey began. Some of these are recorded for the purpose of allowing onboard ticket inspection but additionally enable innovative spatial validation features introduced by the methodology. The results led to the conclusion that the methodology is effective for estimating journey destinations at the disaggregate level and identifies false positives reliably.

Customer attrition in retailing: An application of Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines

The profit resulting from customer relationship is essential to ensure companies viability, so an improvement in customer retention is crucial for competitiveness. As such, companies have recognized the importance of customer centered strategies and consequently customer relationship management (CRM) is often at the core of their strategic plans. In this context, a priori knowledge about the risk of a given customer to mitigate or even end the relationship with the provider is valuable information that allows companies to take preventive measures to avoid defection. This paper proposes a model to predict partial defection, using two classification techniques: Logistic regression and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS). The main objective is to compare the performance of MARS with Logistic regression in modeling customer attrition. This paper considers the general form of Logistic regression and Logistic regression combined with a wrapper feature selection approach, such as stepwise approach. The empirical results showed that MARS performs better than Logistic regression when variable selection procedures are not used. However, MARS loses its superiority when Logistic regression is conducted with stepwise feature selection.

Requirements engineering for multi-channel services: the SEB method and its application to a multi-channel bank

The widespread usage of technology for service provision to customers has created a new and challenging environment for the design of interactive systems, with the emergence of technology enabled multi-channel services. Requirements engineers involved in the design of such service systems must actively work together with interaction designers and service managers to better integrate customer service experience and technology components, requiring unifying methods and tools within the emerging field of service science management and engineering. This paper proposes the service experience blueprint (SEB), a multidisciplinary method for the design of technology enabled multi-channel service systems and illustrates its application in two examples of redesign of banking services that involved an extensive study with more than 4,000 bank customers. The SEB method is based on concepts and tools from RE and interaction design, such as goal-oriented analysis and conceptual modeling, but also uses methods developed in the service and marketing fields, such as service blueprinting. SEB brings marketing research methods to the requirements process, as they can provide a useful contribution for the elicitation of customer experience requirements in service environments. By bringing together goal-oriented modeling and use case modeling from requirements engineering, with service blueprinting from service design, the SEB method contributes to creating a shared understanding and a unifying language to better support the design of new technology enabled multi-channel service systems, where technology and service issues are deeply intertwined.