Establishing the design knowledge for emerging interaction platforms

While awaiting a variety of innovative interactive products and services to appear in the market in the near future such as interactive tabletops, interactive TVs, public multi-touch walls, and other embedded appliances, this paper calls for preparation for the arrival of such interactive platforms based on their interactivity. We advocate studying, understanding and establishing the foundation for interaction characteristics and affordances and design implications for these platforms which we know will soon emerge and penetrate our everyday lives. We review some of the archetypal interaction platform categories of the future and highlight the current status of the design knowledge-base accumulated to date and the current rate of growth for each of these. We use example designs illustrating design issues and considerations based on the authors’ 12-year experience in pioneering novel applications in various forms and styles

Online Store Locator: An Essential Resource for Retailers in the 21st Century

Most retailers use their websites and social media to increase their visibility, while potential customers get information about these retailers using the Internet on electronic devices. Many papers have previously studied online marketing strategies used by retailers, but little attention has been paid to determine how these companies provide information through the Internet about the location and characteristics of their stores. This paper aims to obtain evidence about the inclusion of interactive web maps on retailers’ websites to provide information about the location of their stores. With this purpose, the store locator interactive tools of specialty retailers’ websites included in the report “Global Powers of Retailing 2015” are studied in detail using different procedures, such as frequency analysis and word clouds. From the results obtained, it was concluded that most of these firms use interactive maps to provide information about their offline stores, but today some of them still use non-interactive (static) maps or text format to present this information. Moreover, some differences were observed among the search filters used in the store locator services, according to the retailer’s specialty. These results provided insight into the important role of online store locator tools on retailers’ websites

The Role of Signaling Identity in the Adoption of Personal Technologies

We explore symbolic determinants of technology acceptance to complement more functional frameworks and better predict decisions to adopt information appliances. Previous research has investigated such variables as “need for uniqueness” and “status gains” to capture relevant aspects of technology acceptance. However, the more we move toward personal and ubiquitous technologies, the more we need to broaden and deepen our understanding of the symbolic aspects of adoption. This study reinterprets the symbolic dimension of adoption by broadening its scope to include the self-concept. Results support a prominent role for self-identity in predicting intentions to adopt mobile TVs. Self-identity is shown to complement the effects of “need for uniqueness” and “status gains” in this regard

Views from within a narrative : Evaluating long-term human-robot interaction in a naturalistic environment using open-ended scenarios

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Date of acceptance: 16/06/2014This article describes the prototyping of human–robot interactions in the University of Hertfordshire (UH) Robot House. Twelve participants took part in a long-term study in which they interacted with robots in the UH Robot House once a week for a period of 10 weeks. A prototyping method using the narrative framing technique allowed participants to engage with the robots in episodic interactions that were framed using narrative to convey the impression of a continuous long-term interaction. The goal was to examine how participants responded to the scenarios and the robots as well as specific robot behaviours, such as agent migration and expressive behaviours. Evaluation of the robots and the scenarios were elicited using several measures, including the standardised System Usability Scale, an ad hoc Scenario Acceptance Scale, as well as single-item Likert scales, open-ended questionnaire items and a debriefing interview. Results suggest that participants felt that the use of this prototyping technique allowed them insight into the use of the robot, and that they accepted the use of the robot within the scenarioPeer reviewe

Conceptualising the role of innovation--attributes for examining consumer adoption of entertainment--related innovations

Several enhancements and new features have been introduced in the television entertainment industry to offer the viewers with a high quality viewing experience when it comes to contemporary home entertainment services. Tata SKY’s direct-to-home (DTH) service is one such service that has been recently introduced in the Indian context. For achieving an increased adoption rate of this innovation, it is important to gain an understanding of the behaviour of different factors that influence the potential consumers to form positive intentions about such innovations, in turn attracting them to accept and use of such innovations. This paper, thus aims at developing a theory-based conceptual framework for examining the consumer adoption of entertainment related innovations using the innovationattributes that have been acknowledged in the recent literature as having considerable influences on the acceptance of various innovations. Innovation-attributes from Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, Tornatzky and Klein’s meta-analysis, and Moore and Benbasat’s perceived characteristics of innovating theory will be used here to develop a conceptual framework suitable for investigating the adoption of entertainment related innovations

Entry and access : how shareability comes about

Shareability is a design principle that refers to how a system, interface, or device engages a group of collocated, co-present users in shared interactions around the same content (or the same object). This is broken down in terms of a set of components that facilitate or constrain the way an interface (or product) is made shareable. Central are the notions of access points and entry points. Entry points invite and entice people into engagement, providing an advance overview, minimal barriers, and a honeypot effect that draws observers into the activity. Access points enable users to join a group's activity, allowing perceptual and manipulative access and fluidity of sharing. We show how these terms can be useful for informing analysis and empirical research

Framework for a Residential Energy Information System (REMIS) to promote energy efficient behaviour in residential energy end users

Previous studies on residential energy end use behavior reported significant reduction in energy end use of 7% to 24% when feedback is used to modify behavior in an energy efficient manner. However, most feedback systems investigated in previous studies have not benefited from advanced information systems (IS). IS can shape energy efficiency behavior by providing real-time feedback on energy consumption, cost and environmental impact. Such systems represent a new and less-researched subfield of energy informatics. This paper provides a conceptual framework for showing the potential use of IS to modify residential energy use behavior towards better energy efficiency. The framework builds on research in residential energy end use, in particular energy end use behavioral model. It provides conceptual inputs for a blue-print to develop a residential energy management information system (REMIS) and also highlights the use of new information and communications technologies (ICT) that had not been widely used, setting the grounds for further research in this area.<br /

ICT entertainment appliances’ impact on domestic electricity consumption

Increased electricity consumption and environmental impacts of Information Communication Technology (ICT) have been subjects of research since the 1990s. This paper focuses on consumer electronics in households, in particular TVs, computers and their peripherals. ICT accounts for almost 15% of global domestic electricity use, including waste energy from devices left on standby which is estimated in the EU-27 to contribute 6% of residential energy demand. In Europe, the household electricity consumption from small electronic appliances, including ICT, increased by 2.5 times in 2011 compared to 1990. Similarly, in the UK, energy demand from electronic devices accounted for 23% of total household electricity use in 2012, compared to 12% in 1990. This is an outcome of the market saturation of new, cheaper ICT entertainment devices, facilitated by marketing strategies which identify new needs for consumers, as charted by the review of market growth in this paper. New increasingly portable laptops, smart phones and tablets with wireless connectivity allow householders to perform a wider range of activities in a wider range of locations throughout the home, such as social networking while the television is active. We suggest that policies which consider how to increase the energy efficiency of ICT devices alone are unlikely to be successful since effective strategies need to address how the drivers which have developed around the use of ICT can be adapted in order to conserve electricity in households. A range of policy solutions are discussed, including feedback, public information campaigns, environmental education, energy labelling, bans of, or taxation on the least efficient products as well as the use of a TV as central hub to perform the existing functions of multiple devices

Framework for a Residential Energy Information System (REMIS) to Promote Energy Efficient Behaviour in Residential Energy End Users

Previous studies on residential energy end use behavior reported significant reduction in energy end use of 7% to 24% when feedback is used to modify behavior in an energy efficient manner. However, most feedback systems investigated in previous studies have not benefited from advanced information systems (IS). IS can shape energy efficiency behavior by providing real-time feedback on energy consumption, cost and environmental impact. Such systems represent a new and less-researched subfield of energy informatics. This paper provides a conceptual framework for showing the potential use of IS to modify residential energy use behavior towards better energy efficiency. The framework builds on research in residential energy end use, in particular energy end use behavioral model. It provides conceptual inputs for a blue-print to develop a residential energy management information system (REMIS) and also highlights the use of new information and communications technologies (ICT) that had not been widely used, setting the grounds for further research in this area