Government to citizens E-Service Co-Design

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University Londone-Government services are typically developed by internal service providers, often neglecting the service end user. Subsequent delivery of services can be jeopardised without due consideration of the service user, lacking in consideration of their needs and expectations in the design process. However, the service provider when designing e-services for varied users, find it is hard to meet the prospective users’ expectations and needs and involve them in an iterative design processes. To address this issue; a Co-design approach has been applied and focuses on Jordanian Government to Citizens (G2C) e-services. Co-design tools/methods maximize opportunities and provide new possibilities for communicating and collaborating with varied and diverse users. The main aim of this research is to improve the quality and efficiency of G2C e-services by adopting the Co-design approach including its tools/methods to support user participation throughout design process, and how these tools/methods pretend the features of user participation. A novel G2C e-Service Co-Design Framework (G2C-SCOF) is constructed with mechanisms for understanding the stakeholders’ requirements, and granting them an active role throughout design process of G2C e-service design. A wiki-based Co-design prototype (WCP) is developed and introduced as a response to and evaluation of the developed G2C-SCOF. This research also presents results from the case study in Jordan and used to evaluate WCP effectiveness regarding users’ participation role(s) throughout the Co-design process based on standard service design phases. Interestingly, involvement throughout design process as such can be an enriching experience for the users. Offering a channel to uncover their own creativity and provide enjoyment for them as they see their contributions evolve into a viable service. A robust method for uncovering domain concepts is derived that bridges the requirements’ gap between service provider and service user within a G2C e-service design context. A first iteration evaluates the adoption and acceptance of Jordan Government Portal (JGP) based on a model titled Methodology for e-Government Service Adoption and Acceptance Measurement (MEGA-M). MEGA-M is then used to design a survey and subsequently investigate how citizens perceive the quality of the JGP. RepGrid methodology with semi-structured interviews are deployed in the second iteration – with 24 participants from diverse backgrounds contributing to a synthesised cognitive model titled Stakeholder’s requirements map for G2C Service Design’ (SRM-G2C). Finally, a prototype WCP is developed as the third iteration for evaluation purposes. WCP is a platform for facilitating the sharing and expression of ideas and/or assumptions used to improve the effectiveness of G2C e-service design. The conclusions and contributions drawn from this research are expected to benefit researchers, providing insights for future research in the field of e-Government service design, and practitioners, providing a systematic framework for supporting the collaboration among stakeholders in designing G2C e-services

Innovation culture in business to business (B2B) consultancies – key factors

Innovation has become a necessity for the survival of organizations. Recent academic and practitioner publications have focused on the importance of the culture of innovation and have identified a number of cultural practices (referred to as ‘factors’ in this thesis) that enable organizations to be innovative. To understand the factors of innovation culture further, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken. The SLR identified 27 factors of innovation culture, but showed that there is conflicting evidence on which of these factors is most important for innovation. Further, the SLR showed there is only sparse evidence on the reasons why the 27 factors are important. From an academic research standpoint, there is thus a lack of clarity around the phenomenon of innovation culture. From a practitioner standpoint, managers do not have clarity on which aspects to focus, when trying to create a culture of innovation. These gaps in the extant literature led to two research questions (RQs): RQ1 – “What are the most important factors of innovation culture as perceived by managers?”; RQ2 – “Why are the factors (from RQ1) of culture considered to be important?” To investigate these questions, the PSF (Professional Services Firm) sector was chosen because: (a) such firms are constantly under pressure to differentiate themselves by offering innovative solutions to clients, (b) PSFs face a unique set of challenges to overcome in order to innovate, and (c) there are practically no studies on innovation culture in the PSF industry, providing an opportunity to make a contribution to knowledge. Three in-depth exploratory case studies were conducted using a complex research design employing multiple data sources (interviews, focus groups, documents, and observations). Although each individual case study identified a set of factors most relevant to its business context, the cross-case analysis identified 12 key factors of innovation culture relevant to all three cases. The findings from both individual cases and the cross-case analysis form the contribution of this thesis. The main contribution of this thesis to theory is that it identified 12 key factors of innovation culture and so clarifies the phenomenon. Compared to the literature, the study added two new key factors and also provided more empirical evidence for others that had previously been considered as less important. The thesis also highlighted that the industry (PSF)/sub-industry (e.g. IT, management, engineering consultancies) and organizational context determine what factors are relevant for innovation culture. From a practitioner standpoint, this thesis examined each of the 12 key factors and generated insights into how they contribute to addressing the challenges that inhibit the PSFs from innovating. These insights will be helpful to managers at a practical level to be able to create a culture of innovation

The influence of social identity when digitally sharing location

By enabling users to self-report their whereabouts and share it with a vast and diverse audience, location sharing systems can be useful means of projecting the self and expressing one’s social identity (an individual’s personal self-conception). Through three research studies, this thesis investigates how social identity influences the digital sharing of location. It does so by first exploring how people socially interact offline and then investigates how facets of this behaviour are enacted in location sharing systems. Thus, it offers insights into how offline social behaviour extends to digital spaces and how it impacts social interaction in the digital realm. This thesis finds that social identity not only influences digital location sharing, but in systems that enable social networking, is the very driving force behind the phenomenon. Users actively exhibit their identity through their location, using it as a means of communicating moods, emotions, activities, and experiences. Social identity impacts the places likely to be shared and those places, in turn, reflect one’s identity by revealing much about an individual’s personality and lifestyle. This research also discovers that aspects of offline social behaviour have not been replicated particularly well in the online world. Conventional location sharing systems often require users to broadcast their content to one homogenous ‘friends’ list. This model overlooks some of the key components of offline social behaviour such as multi-faceted identities, context-specific behaviour and the heterogeneity of human relationships. This can result in challenges when attempting to manage different facets of identity and can heighten anxieties about sharing as a whole. Recommendations are made on how such issues can be mitigated in future platforms. This thesis has implications for the design of future location sharing systems. By studying human interaction in digital environments, it also contributes to the Human Factors and HCI disciplines

The influence of social identity when digitally sharing location

By enabling users to self-report their whereabouts and share it with a vast and diverse audience, location sharing systems can be useful means of projecting the self and expressing one’s social identity (an individual’s personal self-conception). Through three research studies, this thesis investigates how social identity influences the digital sharing of location. It does so by first exploring how people socially interact offline and then investigates how facets of this behaviour are enacted in location sharing systems. Thus, it offers insights into how offline social behaviour extends to digital spaces and how it impacts social interaction in the digital realm. This thesis finds that social identity not only influences digital location sharing, but in systems that enable social networking, is the very driving force behind the phenomenon. Users actively exhibit their identity through their location, using it as a means of communicating moods, emotions, activities, and experiences. Social identity impacts the places likely to be shared and those places, in turn, reflect one’s identity by revealing much about an individual’s personality and lifestyle. This research also discovers that aspects of offline social behaviour have not been replicated particularly well in the online world. Conventional location sharing systems often require users to broadcast their content to one homogenous ‘friends’ list. This model overlooks some of the key components of offline social behaviour such as multi-faceted identities, context-specific behaviour and the heterogeneity of human relationships. This can result in challenges when attempting to manage different facets of identity and can heighten anxieties about sharing as a whole. Recommendations are made on how such issues can be mitigated in future platforms. This thesis has implications for the design of future location sharing systems. By studying human interaction in digital environments, it also contributes to the Human Factors and HCI disciplines

Development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics Assisted Sustainable New Product Development Methodology for Flow Handling Equipment Industry

This study presents an assessment of the current state of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) adoption in fluid flow handling equipment industry and demonstrates its utility in the New Product Development (NPD) process through the development of a novel sustainable CFD-assisted NPD methodology. In the flow handling equipment industry, the need for a CFD-optimised methodology in the management of NPD activities is prioritized by the modern global inclination towards increased sustainability practices coupled with the emerging digital industrial revolution. Most fossil-fuelled and green energy sources rely on the control of fluid flow for various purposes such as in valve and piping networks, heat exchangers and wind turbines among others. While fluid flow in either of these systems can be analysed using conventional numerical calculations and experimental methods, CFD as a nascent technology in the digital era, provides a virtual digital environment for simulating, analysing and predicting flow behaviour thereby inspiring sustainable rapid design and development of new flow handling solutions. Despite these recent advancements, some firms in the flow handling equipment industry experience varied challenges in adopting CFD technology and optimizing its integration to the overall NPD process. In the body of literature, mentions of CFD-optimized NPD methodologies are grossly limited. Where feats achieved using CFD are presented, they are mostly recorded as isolated cases during design but seldom as part of a systemic methodology with capacity to influence the entire NPD process itself. The question as to whether the flow handling equipment industry is ready for such a systemic integration of CFD technology is one that this research develops to assess the current practice with a view to developing a systemic methodology in its place. Following a pragmatic inquiry, a mixed methods approach was adopted for the research beginning with a qualitative investigation of six flow handling equipment industry firms in West Yorkshire. Six key respondents from Small, Medium and Large Enterprises in the Valve and Fan industry were each interviewed following preliminary questionnaire sessions. The key findings from the study revealed that ‘cultural perception’, and ‘accessibility’ were key factors that influenced the adoption of CFD technology alongside the original constructs of ‘perceived ease of use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’ highlighted in the standard Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). As a response to the perceived difficulty in adoption of CFD technology, most of the firms outsourced CFD related work or decided not to use the technology at all. Methodically, most of the firms did not appear to be very structured in their approach to NPD but mostly applied modified adaptations of traditional staged NPD processes that were not originally designed specifically for flow handling equipment product development processes. Consequently, a novel CFD-assisted NPD methodology was developed utilizing Systems Engineering principles to provide the industry with a structure for accelerating CFD integration for NPD process in order to stimulate organisational growth and improve sustainable product quality practice within dynamic product lifecycles. Following the development of the new methodology, a pilot test was initiated as the second part of the mixed methods approach, to test the efficacy of the newly developed methodology. A novel hybrid valve design was realised from the pilot test, featuring both linear and equal percentage valve flow characteristics. Other notable novelties from this study include; a new CFD-optimised Technology Acceptance Model to aid in future assessments of CFD-specific technology adoption in flow handling equipment industry, a novel systems engineering process engine for procedural and lifecycle navigation during new product development, and a novel prescriptive product development plan for the novel hybrid valve design. In recommending future work, the author believes more attempts to integrate CFD technology into the NPD process would improve the prospects for faster, cost effective and high quality new product development in the flow handling equipment industry. The new CFD-optimised technology acceptance model can also provide a guide for assessing future trends in CFD technology adoption specifically when used in line with periodic advancements in computing technology or as global sustainability requirements influence organisational practice within the flow handling equipment industry. Technologically, the author recommends development of user-friendly CFD software as well as cost effective commercial CFD codes to accelerate widespread CFD adoption