Heart over Heels? An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between Emotions and Review Helpfulness for Experience and Credence Goods

According to current scholarly and practitioner thinking, one way of enhancing the perceived helpfulness of reviews is by encouraging the use of emotional language. Yet, studies on review helpfulness have paid little attention to studying this effect as it applies to different product types, namely experience and credence goods. Using data from amazon.com, we conduct an empirical test using a natural language understanding algorithm. Our results suggest that for both experience and credence goods, fear, joy, and sadness are correlated with an increase in review helpfulness, whereas anger is negatively correlated with it. These emotions are perceived as more helpful for experience goods than for credence goods

Development and Evaluation of a Collaborative Stock Trading Environment in Virtual Reality

Due to the proliferation of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, VR is finding new applications in various domains, such as stock trading. Here, traders invest in stocks intending to increase their profit. For this purpose, in conventional stock trading, traders usually make use of 2D applications on desktop or laptop devices. This leads to many drawbacks such as poor visibility due to limited 2D representation, complex interaction due to indirect interaction via mouse and keyboard, or restricted support for collaboration between traders. To overcome these issues, we have developed a novel collaborative, virtual environment for stock trading, which enables stock traders to view financial information and trade stocks with other collaborators. The main results of a usability study indicate that the VR environment, compared to conventional stock trading, shows no significant advantages concerning efficiency and effectiveness, however, we could observe an increased user satisfaction and better collaboration

Conversational Agents and their Influence on the Well-being of Clinicians

An increasing number of clinicians (i.e., nurses and physicians) suffer from mental health-related issues like depression and burnout. These, in turn, stress communication, collaboration, and decision- making—areas in which Conversational Agents (CAs) have shown to be useful. Thus, in this work, we followed a mixed-method approach and systematically analysed the literature on factors affecting the well-being of clinicians and CAs’ potential to improve said well-being by relieving support in communication, collaboration, and decision-making in hospitals. In this respect, we are guided by Brigham et al. (2018)’s model of factors influencing well-being. Based on an initial number of 840 articles, we further analysed 52 papers in more detail and identified the influences of CAs’ fields of application on external and individual factors affecting clinicians’ well-being. As our second method, we will conduct interviews with clinicians and experts on CAs to verify and extend these influencing factors

Achieving Usability: Looking for Connections between User-Centred Design Practices and Resultant Usability Metrics in Agile Software Development

This article searches for correlations between the practices of usability professionals from software development teams and the resulting usability of the system they are working on. After reviewing the literature of the past decade, we can conclude that most researchers try to achieve better usability with process proposals, but measurements focus on perceived usability. The level of involvement of users in the requirements capture phase is unclear. There is a trend to reduce costs of usability engineering, either by choosing more lightweight and informal methods or by trying to substitute user involvement. Looking at decade's worth of 452 articles about "agile AND usability" in Scopus, we selected 133 which deal with the integration of usability, UX and User Centred Design practices and Agile development

Trust Me, I’m an Influencer! - A Comparison of Perceived Trust in Human and Virtual Influencers

Influencers in social media are often perceived as a trusted source for many people which is why companies increasingly promote their products through them. However, influencers can also cause reputational damage for a brand. Virtual (computer-generated) influencers can be used to minimize these risks and to better tailor content to a target group of a company. As trust is one success factor of online marketing, we examine differences in the perception of trust in human and virtual influencers. In a first online survey study, we presented N = 112 participants the content of human and virtual influencers, published on Instagram. Preliminary findings reveal that although participants were often unsure whether the presented influencer was human or computer-generated, perceived trust, social presence, and humanness was consistently rated higher for human influencers. To gain deeper insights into potential, unconscious decision conflicts which can determine trust evaluations, a follow-up neuroimaging study is discussed

The European Digital Kitchen Project

This article reports on the European Digital Kitchen, an EU-funded language learning project which promotes learning of languages, cultures and cuisines in digital interactive kitchens. The project involves taking a normal kitchen and specifically adapting it for language learning using the next generation of digital technology, namely activity recognition and sensor technology. We intend that learners will be able to learn aspects of the language whilst performing a meaningful real-world task and will simultaneously experience the cultural aspect of learning to cook a foreign dish. The article starts by outlining the project background, including rationale, motivation and aims. We then explain in detail how the technology works (using photographs) and outline our design methodology, which blends Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We then present 3 extracts of Digital Kitchen interaction to illustrate the type of learning which takes place.Cet article rend compte de la 'European Digital Kitchen', un projet d'apprentissage de la langue financé par l'UE qui favorise l'apprentissage des langues, des cultures et des cuisines dans les cuisines interactifs digitales. Le projet consiste à prendre une cuisine normale et l'adapter spécifiquement pour l'apprentissage des langues à l'aide de la prochaine génération de la technologie digitale, à savoir la reconnaissance de l'activité et de la technologie de capteur. Nous avons l'intention que les apprenants seront en mesure d'apprendre les aspects de la langue tout en effectuant une tâche utile dans le monde réel et auront simultanément l'expérience de l'aspect culturel d'apprendre à cuisiner un plat étrangère.Dieser Artikel berichtet über die 'European Digital Kitchen', ein EU-geförderten Sprachlernprojekt , das Lernen von Sprachen, Kulturen und Küchen in digitalen interaktiven Küchen fördert . Das Projekt modifiziert eine normale Küche speziell für Sprachlern mit der nächsten Generation der digitalen Technologie, nämlich Aktivitätserkennung und Sensortechnik. Wir wollen , dass die Lernenden in der Lage sind , Aspekte der Sprache lernen, während der Durchführung eine sinnvolle reale Aufgabe und gleichzeitig erleben sie den kulturellen Aspekt des Lernens, indem sie eine ausländische Gericht kochen

Augmented reality supported work instructions for onsite facility maintenance

During the operation and maintenance phase of buildings operators need to perform on site maintenance activities to prevent functional failures of technical equipment. As this phase is the longest and most expensive one respective improvements can significantly reduce the overall lifecycle budget. Based on their previous work, in this paper the authors present an Augmented Reality (AR) based concept and implementation to support mobile and onsite maintenance activities by (1) preparing and generating AR work order instructions based on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) information, (2) using these to aid the actual onsite maintenance job using hybrid 3D tracking, and (3) creating enhanced and context-related maintenance service reports to be fed back to the PLM system. Preliminary results reveal the potential of the proposed solution, but also leave room for future improvements

A Design Science Artefact for Cyber Threat Detection and Actor Specific Communication

Over the past few decades, the number and variety of cyberattacks and malware patterns have increased immensely. As a countermeasure, computer emergency response teams were established with the responsibility of securing the cyber environment. However, recent studies revealed that currently performed manual processes and the unavailability of adequate tools impede the achievement of cybersecurity. To address these challenges, we followed the Design Science paradigm to develop an artefact that improves the evaluation of open-source intelligence obtained from Twitter as well as the actor-specific communication of cyber threat information. Subsequently, the implemented artefact will be evaluated through semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts. This research in progress article presents the identified research gap and describes the development process and the endeavor to contribute to the cybersecurity domain theoretically with design principles for the development of an instrument and practically by implementing an artefact that supports domain experts in their work

Towards a Differentiation Perspective on Social Media Platforms’ Affordances and Use Cultures – An Organizing Literature Review

Since social media transformed the way how people communicate and consume content, companies explore how to effectively build relationships with users. Anecdotal reports of practical case experiences indicate that a key managerial challenge for companies lies in effectively coping with the individual requirements and the full range of options of the various different social media platforms as well as adapting to the target groups’ platform-specific use cultures. Current theoretical conceptualizations of generalized social media ‘per se’ appear too broad for addressing and differentiating the detailed affordances and their appropriation by networked users in the leading platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Based on a comprehensive organizing literature review that seeks to link the affordance and the use culture perspective in information systems research, we contribute to a better understanding of differences between social media platforms