Wolfgang Maass

Preface to the Focus Theme Section: 'Smart Products'

The goal of this focus theme on smart products is the presentation of initial discussions of how embedding IT into tangible products leads to innovative information systems and thereby to new business opportunities. In the focus theme section some key issues are addressed with a particular focus on design methods and the business dimension of smart products

Design and evaluation of Ubiquitous Information Systems and use in healthcare

Designing Ubiquitous Information Systems (UIS) for supporting complex everyday situations requires extended design methods and models. To address this, we introduce design models as a special class of conceptual models that support design processes for IS in general and UIS in particular. Design models for UIS are concise abstract conceptual models of key situations that conceive social, informational, physical, and service properties as requirements for targeted Information Systems. In this paper, we show how design models can be derived from narratives of key situations, guided by information systems ontologies, and domain specific input theories. This conceptual level offers an innovative approach for designing Ubiquitous Information Systems (UIS) in general and Healthcare Ubiquitous Information Systems (H-UIS) in particular. The proposed design approach is applied for developing H-UIS for reducing Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) by improving the communications between patients and healthcare professionals. Using the domain specific input theory of Health Promotion Model (HPM), the modeling guidelines for design models are generated and utilized in the development of a H-UIS to avoid ADEs. The H-UIS improves several processes involving information technologies for healthcare professionals. The system is empirically evaluated and results show high level of interest among users and initial positive adoption effects. Open issues and future research opportunities are also presented at the end.

Strategies for Selling Paid Content on Newspaper and Magazine Web Sites: An Empirical Analysis of Bundling and Splitting of News and Magazine Articles

More and more newspaper and magazine Web sites offer paid content. However, selling information goods at a price higher than the marginal cost means finding a strategy for product or price differentiation. A possible strategy to solve this problem is the bundling of information goods. In this article, we analyze empirically, with quantitative statistic methods, strategies for selling bundled and unbundled content on newspaper and magazine Web sites. This analysis is based on the theoretical approach of Bakos and Brynjolfsson (1996). The article shows that a cannibalization takes place if the same bundle of information goods is offered in offline (printed) and online (digital) media at the same time. Traditional bundling models work nonetheless in an online media if the online content is rebundled (e.g., as dossiers about a topic), but thereby do not compete with the printed version.

Towards an ontology-based distributed architecture for paid content

Business models on the basis of digital content require sophisticated descriptions of that content, as well as service-oriented carrier architectures that allow to negotiate and enforce contract and license schemes in heterogeneous digital application environments. We describe Knowledge Content Objects (KCO), that provide expressive semantic descriptions of digital content, based on an ontology of Information Objects, built under the DOLCE, DnS and Plan Ontologies (DDPO). In particular, we discuss how this structure supports business requirements within the context of paid content. Interactions between agents are embedded into digital infrastructures that are implemented on an advanced knowledge content carrier architecture (KCCA) that communicates via a dedicated protocol (KCTP). We show how this architecture allows to integrate existing digital repositories so that the content can be made available to a semantically rich digital environment.

Knowledge-Based Bundling of Smart Products on a Mobile Recomendation Agent

Mobile technologies have the potential to change not only brick-and-mortar stores but also the way, how customers interact with physical products. They enable operational agility by means of improved availability and quality of information required by customers for in-store purchase decisions. In this paper, we show how an in-store bundling scenario can be supported by semantically enriched products (denoted as smart products) that provide dynamic product information through the use of mobile recommendation agents (MRA). We introduce therefore the concept of knowledge-based bundling that relies on smart products and MRA. In addition, we developed a MRA and evaluated its user acceptance for product bundle purchases. For this purpose, a lab experiment was conducted (n=37), which resulted in some design enhancements and promising adoption rates.

Critical Privacy Factors of Internet of Things Services: An Empirical Investigation with Domain Experts

Internet of Things (IOT) services provide new security and privacy challenges in our everyday life. But no empirical instrument has been developed for the class of IOT services that identifies privacy factors that predict usage intentions and individuals’ willingness to provide personal information. The contribution of this paper is to address this lack of research. The proposed research model integrates the Extended Privacy Calculus Model and the Technology Acceptance Model and is pre-tested with 30 IOT experts. Results indicate that intentions to use IOT services are influenced by various factors such as perceived privacy risks and personal interest. It is further assumed that factors such as legislation, data security or transparency of information use influence the adoption of IOT services. Accordingly, further research must focus on a better understanding of these factors to increase the adoption of both useful and secure IOT services.

Reasoning on Smart Products in Consumer Good Domains

Ambient intelligence technologies rapidly change product capabilities but also the way how users interact with physical products. This product-centered stance requires an instance-centered Product Life Cycle (iPLC) view which perceives products as autonomous actors performing in physical situations which leads to the concept of smart products. Smart products adapt to situations on the basis of internal representations. We present a generic extensible data model, called Smart Product Description Objects (SPDO), whose semantics are described by formal and machine-readable ontologies. SPDO instantiations are computational counterparts of physical product instances. We exemplify the use of SPDO by inferring similarity sets of products within a fashion domain.

The role of product reviews on mobile devices for in-store purchases: consumers’ usage intentions, costs and store preferences

Product reviews help consumers in purchase decisions. In contrast to reviews obtained from websites on the desktop, it is open if they are adopted for in-store purchases on mobile devices. Further, it is open to which degree free product reviews provided by users or paid product reviews provided by experts are adopted and influence consumers 鈂 preferences for stores that offer access to them. To address these questions, a theoretical model based on innovation diffusion theory, technology acceptance model and theory of planned behaviour is developed and empirically tested with 116 subjects. Results indicate that consumers intend to use product reviews on mobile devices for in-store purchases. Moreover, they are willing to pay almost 5% of the product 鈂s price for a review. Based on these findings, new business models

Pattern-based approach for designing with diagrammatic and propositional conceptual models

A conceptual modeling approach for Ubiquitous Information Systems (UIS) is presented as a central part of a UIS design methodology. Three conceptual models are used for step-wise derivation of machineexecutable design models for distributed service infrastructures: narratives, pattern-based diagrammatic conceptual models (Pre-Artifacts), and formalized propositional conceptual models.

A methodology for content-centered design of ambient environments

The design of ambient environments does not depend on technical issues exclusively but also on social aspects There are several design specifications for ambient environments as well as development principles for the design of such systems, a design method should address In this paper, we survey design methodologies considering the fulfilling of the design principles and their applicability for ambient environments Because unprecedented, we introduce a methodology for Content-Centered Design of Ambient Environments (CoDesA) and apply this method in parts to an ambient bath environment.