Technology and Caregiving: Emerging Interventions and Directions for Research.

An array of technology-based interventions has increasingly become available to support family caregivers, primarily focusing on health and well-being, social isolation, financial, and psychological support. More recently the emergence of new technologies such as mobile and cloud, robotics, connected sensors, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, voice, and the evermore ubiquitous tools supported by advanced data analytics, coupled with the integration of multiple technologies through platform solutions, have opened a new era of technology-enabled interventions that can empower and support family caregivers. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for identifying and addressing the challenges that may need to be overcome to effectively apply technology-enabled solutions for family caregivers. The paper identifies a number of challenges that either moderate or mediate the full use of technologies for the benefit of caregivers. The challenges include issues related to equity, inclusion, and access; ethical concerns related to privacy and security; political and regulatory factors affecting interoperability and lack of standards; inclusive/human-centric design and issues; and inherent economic and distribution channel difficulties. The paper concludes with a summary of research questions and issues that form a framework for global research priorities

The Past, Present, and Future of “IS Success”

Since the introduction of information systems more than 60 years ago, organizations want to ensure that their systems are effective or “successful”. Much has changed in the evaluation of information systems success during this period. The role of information systems in organizations has changed dramatically, as have the key stakeholders and the expected benefits of the investments in IS. During this period, IS research has evolved to keep pace with the changing expectations regarding the success of information systems, yet practice tends to lag behind. In this commentary, we discuss five eras of information systems evolution and explain how the perceptions and measures of successful information systems have changed across these eras. By looking at the past and present, we are able to comment on how our understanding of success has evolved over time in research and practice. We discuss the inadequacy of IS success evaluation in practice. Finally, we offer four themes as calls for future action related to the research of information systems success

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

LEARNING ABOUT AMBIGUOUS TECHNOLOGIES: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND RESEARCH AGENDA

Information Technologies (IT) have gradually transformed into complex digital artefacts with blurred and constantly changing functional boundaries. While this shift offers promising venues that unfold in front of our eyes every day, it also challenges the deeply entrenched knowledge structures on which ordinary users rely to learn about unfamiliar technologies. We propose to take a step back in order to theorize the ambiguous nature of modern IT and to speculate on how users learn to use them. This paper revisits a wide array of management (BYOD, Gamification) and IS design trends (generativity, everyday computing, incompleteness) through the lens of the categorization framework. Our review of the literature on ambiguous products suggests that users exposed to ambiguous technologies may experience a categorization difficulty that disrupts the process of learning how to use them. This difficulty stems from a user’s belief that there are multiple or inconsistent interpretations of why and how to use an IT, as well as a perception that a given IT has some attributes in common with one or several seemingly unrelated ITs. We build on this theorization to propose a research agenda and discuss the expected practical implications of this path of research

Calm ICT design in hotels: A critical review of applications and implications

There has recently been a call for revisiting the effect of ICT on guest experience in hotels. This is because ICT solutions can act not only as enhancers of hotel guest experience, but also as its inhibitors. In response to this call, the notion of calm ICT design has recently been introduced. Calm ICT design describes the ICT solutions that are used only when and if required, thus not calling user’s attention at all times. Although this concept is highly relevant to the hospitality industry, it has never been systematically considered within. This paper conceptualizes calm ICT design for application in the hospitality context. To this end, it analyzes the ICT solutions that are currently employed by hospitality businesses from the calm ICT design perspective; discusses how the opportunities offered by calm ICT design can be better capitalized upon by hospitality managers; and outlines directions for future research

A Proposal to Elucidate the Net Benefits of Digital Twins in Electrical Generation Facilities: An IS Success Perspective

The rapid integration of industrial Internet of things (IoT) technology has enabled widespread adoption of digital twin (DT) technologies. The work herein proposes to understand the net benefits of the DT technologies using the IS Success model. We propose to conduct interviews and surveys of DT users at industrial gas turbine electrical generation facilities to gain a better understanding of the costs and benefits of DTs in electricity generation. In doing so we will revise and the IS success model with the latest research on technology use and extend it to DT technologies

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

A Pedagogical Smart Learning Environment in South African Tertiary Institutions

With the rapid growth rate of technology innovation different sectors tends to keep up with the developing trends by implementing the latest technology with the aim of achieving their goals. Educational institutions deploy information systems in their teaching and learning environment to enhance performance. However, educational institutions usually struggle with smooth implementation of IT leading to its failure. Adopting various scientific methods such as content analysis, Principal Component Analysis and so on, contextual factors were identified for effective deployment of smart learning environments based on extensive review of exploratory research, analyzing data and study outcomes of ICT deployment educational institutes around the world. The identified factors were used to develop a framework which can inform the deployment of SLE

Context-aware Knowledge-based Systems: A Literature Review

Context awareness systems, a subcategory of intelligent systems, are concerned with suggesting relevant products/services to users' situations as smart services. One key element for improving smart services’ quality is to organize and manipulate contextual data in an appropriate manner to facilitate knowledge generation from these data. In this light, a knowledge-based approach, can be used as a key component in context-aware systems. Context awareness and knowledge-based systems, in fact, have been gaining prominence in their respective domains for decades. However, few studies have focused on how to reconcile the two fields to maximize the benefits of each field. For this reason, the objective of this paper is to present a literature review of how context-aware systems, with a focus on the knowledge-based approach, have recently been conceptualized to promote further research in this area. In the end, the implications and current challenges of the study will be discussed

A Needs-Affordances-Satisfaction Perspective on the Use of Connected Objects

Individuals living a digital life find being connected via digital technologies is increasingly important to their overall well-being, especially as more and more everyday life objects provide connectivity features. However, we know little about the individual drivers and outcomes of using connected objects and the role of connectedness in this regard. This paper develops a needs-affordances-satisfaction perspective that posits that psychological needs motivate individuals’ use of connected objects to the extent these objects provide affordances that satisfy such needs. We identify four connectedness affordances and formulate hypotheses that map the affordances to related psychological needs. We empirically test our predictions through a survey about the use of smartphones and connected cars. Our results have implications for research regarding connectedness and digital lives as well as for technology acceptance research and can enrich existing models by opening up the mechanisms through which psychological needs influence individual use of connected objects