Decision makers\u27 experience of participatory dynamic simulation modelling: Methods for public health policy

Background: Systems science methods such as dynamic simulation modelling are well suited to address questions about public health policy as they consider the complexity, context and dynamic nature of system-wide behaviours. Advances in technology have led to increased accessibility and interest in systems methods to address complex health policy issues. However, the involvement of policy decision makers in health-related simulation model development has been lacking. Where end-users have been included, there has been limited examination of their experience of the participatory modelling process and their views about the utility of the findings. This paper reports the experience of end-user decision makers, including senior public health policy makers and health service providers, who participated in three participatory simulation modelling for health policy case studies (alcohol related harm, childhood obesity prevention, diabetes in pregnancy), and their perceptions of the value and efficacy of this method in an applied health sector context. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with end-user participants from three participatory simulation modelling case studies in Australian real-world policy settings. Interviewees were employees of government agencies with jurisdiction over policy and program decisions and were purposively selected to include perspectives at different stages of model development. Results: The ‘co-production’ aspect of the participatory approach was highly valued. It was reported as an essential component of building understanding of the modelling process, and thus trust in the model and its outputs as a decision-support tool. The unique benefits of simulation modelling included its capacity to explore interactions of risk factors and combined interventions, and the impact of scaling up interventions. Participants also valued simulating new interventions prior to implementation in the real world, and the comprehensive mapping of evidence and its gaps to prioritise future research. The participatory aspect of simulation modelling was time and resource intensive and therefore most suited to high priority complex topics with contested options for intervening. Conclusion: These findings highlight the value of a participatory approach to dynamic simulation modelling to support its utility in applied health policy settings

The Digital Ecosystem as a Business Model

Digital ecosystems are modular type structures composed of loosely connected components that can be combined in different ways. They allow the development of a new business model, which is based on a network of business partners and organizes economic activities in a new way. The digital ecosystem brings together actors from different sectors, with different perspectives and opportunities, who share resources, experiences and ideas, and create value for the end user. The technological basis of digital ecosystems is formed by shared platforms and a set of standards, leading among which is the application programming inter- face (API). Based on theoretical and methodological publications, the article examines the concept of the digital ecosystem as a business model of partnerships, as well as the technologies on which it is developed

Development of an assistive soft exoskeleton : a multistakeholder endeavour

Background As in other areas, digitalization and new technologies become increasingly relevant for physiotherapy. However, often these developments are driven by technological feasibility rather than by clinical demand. In order to grant maximum acceptability and effective implementation of a technology multiple stakeholders i.e. engineers, patients and therapists need to collaborate throughout the planning and development processes. Here, we describe the design and development of three prototype-generations of a soft and modular exoskeleton. Purpose Development of a soft and modular exoskeleton, which incorporates the needs and requirements of future users. Methods Nine research groups including therapists, designers and engineers from seven European countries were involved in this project. As stakeholders we considered patients with gait limitations due to stroke, incomplete spinal cord injury or age-related weakness (primary end-users, PU), therapists with professional experience in the area of the PU’s conditions and non-professional carers (secondary end-users, SU). The perspectives of PU and SU were incorporated into the technical concepts adopting a user-centered design approach. The initial prototype was designed according to the requirements, which were derived from use-cases representing the target populations. Evaluations of all prototypes were performed using semi-structured interviews with both, PU and SU. Functions of the respective prototypes were evaluated with a predefined testing protocol. The conclusions of the evaluations were fed back to the engineers and informed the development of the consecutive prototypes. All data collection procedures were approved by the local ethics committee and participants provided written informed consent. Results In total eight PU and eight SU were recruited. In general, the prototypes were in an early stage of development and the operation required staff with engineering knowledge and an experimental laboratory. In general, PU and SU rated the technology positively. The individually analyzed data from the interviews and functionality tests revealed heterogeneous results indicating the diversity of the PU’s functional impairments and expectations of PU and SU. Conclusions Based on this project’s experience, we are convinced that future PU and SU of a technology must be involved in the development from the very beginning. However, in order to obtain adequate feedback, the choice of individuals (PU and SU) and the level of involvement must be considered carefully. For example, inadequate expectations may draw the attention to irrelevant issues. In our project, research physiotherapists played a key role by bridging PU and SU with engineers. This information exchange was partially challenging because of different areas of interest, different terminology and geographical distance. Implications A common understanding of the project goals among the project teams and adherence to timelines are essential for successful progress such a large project. The project should assure that all stakeholders can acquire basic knowledge and perspectives of the other involved stakeholders, especially from other disciplines. Specifically for physiotherapists, basic and continuing education should incorporate technological knowledge from engineering disciplines in order to enable physiotherapists to contribute to the development of new devices. This opens the chance to participate in the development of technology for clinical applications. Funding acknowledgements This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 688175 (XoSoft)

The Contribution of Participatory Research: On-Farm Research

Participatory research in agriculture may range from research and technology development (R&D), carried out on a research station with some involvement of farmers, through to genuine participatory research involving researchers and farmers working together. The latter involves the end-user in actually carrying out aspects of the research and/or in the development and evaluation of technology that is appropriate to commercial enterprises. Researchers often question the validity of the ‘findings of on-farm participatory research’ as they are more comfortable with the ‘controlled’ environment of the research station. However if research is to be applied appropriately on farms, it must go through a period of evaluation on-farm. This paper summarises perspectives relating to participatory on-farm research, highlighting some opportunities that new technology is providing by considering five key areas as follows: • Participatory research within the agricultural research enterprise (current situation); • On-farm research compared with in-station research (options); • A New Zealand example of on-farm research; • New opportunities in on-farm research; • Future models for participatory on-farm research

A sensitising tool for smart home designers: Based on user-oriented product design research into the home life of older adults in the UK

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Focusing on the needs of users, design can leverage new product development process by offering insightful knowledge of those needs. This research investigates the technology development of smart homes. Design is utilised as a product research tool to identify key insights of the home life of the older adults living in the UK, and for the purpose of informing the front-end of the new product development process. The review of the literature in the field of smart homes suggests that the developments have lagged by a technology-push approach, the lack of appropriate concepts from users’ perspectives as well as the lack of development strategy, which has consequently been reflected in consumers’ reluctance towards smart homes. As a result, this doctoral research aimed to ‘develop a user-oriented product design research tool that improves the understanding of the home life of older adults.’ To achieve the aim, this research employs qualitative methodology to develop a research process that utilises the cultural probe, semi-structured interview and video tour. Informed by ethnographic tradition, this research establishes its trustworthiness and credibility by employing a thorough process of analysis (qualitative analysis with computer-assisted software NVivo 8 and peers debriefing) and evaluation (creative workshop and evaluative interview) with practitioners from the field of product design, design management and design education. The result of the field investigation is presented as ten personas and taxonomy of nodes, which form the contribution of this research, a sensitising tool and process. This research contributes a sensitising tool - a design-led, user-inspired and participatory product design research that the offers insightful knowledge of those older adults and their relationships with their homes living in the UK. This sensitising tool is developed for the smart home designers for the purpose of generating new product ideas and challenges designers’ preconception of users and smart homes, and provokes reflections on the practices of user-centred and user-participatory design, as examined in the creative workshop. In addition, this research also contributes to the growing debate surrounding the issues relating to ethnographic user research and the use of cultural probe for the design of new smart homes

Development and Analysis of a Model for Assessing Perceived Security Threats and Characteristics of Innovating for Wireless Networks

This dissertation employed a two prong approach, whereby the survey and case study methods were used to investigate security issues regarding wireless networks. The survey portion draws together two previously unrelated research streams. Given the recent increased concern for security in the computing milieu, Innovation Diffusion Theory and security factor constructs were merged and synthesized to form a new instrument. This instrument is useful in an effort to understand what role security concerns play in the adoption and diffusion of technology. In development of the new instrument, 481 usable surveys were collected and analyzed. Factor analysis revealed favorable factor loadings in the data. Further analysis was then conducted utilizing multiple regression analysis. This analysis led to the discovery that the constructs of Susceptibility and Severity of Threat, Improvement Potential, and Visibility are significant predictors in regard to level of concern when using wireless networks. Case studies were conducted with a goal to gain a deep knowledge of IT professionals? concerns, attitudes, and best practices toward wireless security. To this end, seven IT professionals were personally interviewed regarding their perceptions and attitudes toward wireless security. In an effort to compare IT professional and end user opinions, 30 IT professionals also completed a paper based survey regarding their perceptions about security. Findings indicate that security professionals are very optimistic for the future of wireless computing. However, that optimism is tempered by a realization that there are a myriad of potential threats that might exploit weakness in wireless security. To determine differences and similarities between users? perspectives and managers? perspectives regarding wireless network security, the results from the survey and case study were synthesized. Most IT professionals (76.19%) reported that, all factors considered, they prefer to use wired networks as opposed to wireless networks; whereas, substantially fewer (44.86%) of the end user respondents reported that they preferred wired over wireless networks. Overall, results suggest that IT professionals are more concerned about security than are end users. However, a challenge remains to make administrators and users aware of the full effect of security threats present in the wireless computing paradigm

A mobile-based solution for supporting end-users in the composition of services

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3910-4Currently, technologies and applications evolve to create eco-systems made up of a myriad of heterogeneous and distributed services that are accessible anytime and anywhere. Even though these services can be used individually, it is their coordinated and combined usage what provide an added value to end-users. In addition, user¿s wide adoption of mobile devices for daily activities have fostered a shift in the role played by end-users towards Internet data and services. However, existing solutions to service composition are not targeted to ordinary end-users. More easy-to-use tools have to be offered to end-users to make sure that they are successfully accepted and used by them. To this end, the work presented in this paper supports end-users in the creation of service compositions by using mobile devices. We present a Domain Specific Visual Language (DSVL) for end-users that allows them to create service compositions. A tool specifically designed for mobile devices supports this DSVL.This work has been developed with the support of MINECO under the project SMART ADAPT TIN2013-42981-P and co-financed with ERDF.Valderas Aranda, PJ.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Mansanet Benavent, I.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2016). A mobile-based solution for supporting end-users in the composition of services. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3910-4S131Athreya B, Bahmani F, Diede A, Scaffidi C (2012) End-user programmers on the loose: a study of programming on the phone for the phone. In IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 75–82Atoma (2015) Atoomam, a touch of magic. Accesible at: https://www.atooma.com/ . Last time accessed: December 2015Ayora C, Torres V, Weber B, Reichert M, Pelechano V (2013) Enhancing modeling and change support for process families through change patterns. In: Enterprise, business-process and information systems modeling. Springer, Berlin, pp. 246–260Boehm B, Abts C, Brown A, Chulani S, Clark B, Horowitz E, Madchy R, Reifer D, Steece B (2000) Software Cost Estimation with COCOMOII. Upper Saddle River: Prentice HallBPDM (2014) Business Process Defintion Metamodel, volume ii: Process Definitions. http://www.omg.org/spec/BPDM/1.0/volume2/PDFCasati F (1998) Models, semantics, and formal methods for the design of workflows and their exceptions. PhD thesis, MilanoCouper MP, Tourangeau R, Conrad FG, Crawford SD (2004) What they see is what we get: response options for web surveys. Soc Sci Comput Rev 22(1):111–127Cuccurullo S, Francese R, Risi M, Tortora G (2011) MicroApps development on mobile phones. In: End-user development. Springer, Berlin, pp. 289–294Dadam P, Reichert M (2009) The ADEPT project: a decade of research and development for robust and flexible process support. Comput Sci - R&D 23:81–97Danado J, Paternò F (2014) Puzzle: a mobile application development environment using a jigsaw metaphor. J Vis Lang Comput 25(4):297–315Danado J, Davies M, Ricca P, Fensel A (2010) An authoring tool for user generated mobile services. In: Future internet-FIS 2010. Springer, Berlin, pp. 118–127Dey AK, Sohn T, Streng S, Kodama J (2006) iCAP: interactive prototyping of context-aware applications. In: Pervasive computing. Springer, Berlin, pp. 254–271Engeström Y, Miettinen R, Punamäki RL (1999) Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGalitz WO (2002) The essential guide to user interface design: an introduction to GUI. In: Design principles and techniques. Wiley, New YorkGil M, Serral E, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2013) Designing for user attention: a method for supporting unobtrusive routine tasks. Sci Comput Program 78(10):1987–2008Gubbi J, Buyya R, Marusic S, Palaniswami M (2013) Internet of things (IoT): a vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Futur Gener Comput Syst 29(7):1645–1660Haines W, Gervasio M, Spaulding A, Peintner B (2010) Recommendations for end-user development. In ACM Workshop on User-Centric Evaluation of Recommender Systems and their Interfaces, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 42-49Häkkilä J, Korpipää P, Ronkainen S, Tuomela U (2005) Interaction and end-user programming with a context-aware mobile application. In: Human-computer interaction-INTERACT 2005. Springer, Berlin, pp. 927–937ICIS (2015) Internet Computing in the Internet of Services. Summer School. Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra. Available at: http://icis.uc.pt/ . Last time accessed: December 2015Ifttt (2015) Ifttt, If This Then That. Accesible at: https://ifttt.com/ . Last time accessed: December 2015Larman C, Basili VR (2003) Iterative and incremental development: a brief history. Computer 6:47–56Lewis JR (1995) IBM computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: psychometric evaluation and instructions for use. Int J Hum Comput Interact 7(1):57–78Liberman H, Paternò F, Klann M, Wulf V (2006) End user development. In: Liberman H, Paternò F, Wulf V (eds) End-user development: an emerging paradigm, vol 9, pp. 427–457Locale (2015) Accesible at: http://www.twofortyfouram.com . Last time accessed: December 2015Lucci G, Paternò F (2014) Understanding end-user development of context-dependent applications in smartphones. In: Human-centered software engineering. Springer, Berlin, pp. 182–198Mansanet I, Torres V, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2014) A Mobile End-Use Tool for service Compositions. X Jornadas de Ciencia e Ingeniería de Servicios (JCIS 2014), 25–35Mansanet I, Torres V, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2015) IoT Compositions by and for the Crowd. XI Jornadas de Ciencia e Ingeniería de Servicios (JCIS 2015)Neil T (2014) Mobile design pattern gallery: UI patterns for smartphone apps. “O’Reilly Media, Inc.”, SebastopolNielsen J (2005) Ten usability heuristics. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics . Last time accessed: February 2016Renger M, Kolfschoten GL, de Vreede GJ (2008) Challenges in collaborative modeling: A literature review. In Advances in enterprise engineering I, held at CAiSE 2008, Montpellier, 10. 61–77Repenning A, Ioannidou A (2006) What makes end-user development tick? 13 design guidelines. End user development, Human-Computer Interaction Series, vol 9, pp. 51–85Runeson P, Höst M (2009) Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empir Softw Eng 14(2):131–164Segal J (2005) Two principles of end-user software engineering research, In ACM SIGSOFT software engineering notes (Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 1–5). ACM, New YorkSerral E, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2013) Context-adaptive coordination of pervasive services by interpreting models during runtime†. Comput J 56(1):87–114Tasker (2015) Tasker, Total Automation for Android. Accesible at: http://tasker.dinglisch.net/ . Last time accessed: December 2015.Uden L, Valderas P, Pastor O (2008) An activity-theory-based model to analyse Web application requirements. Inf Res 13(2):1Valderas P, Pelechano V, Pastor O (2006) A transformational approach to produce web application prototypes from a web requirements model. Int J Web Eng Technol 3(1):4–42Van Deursen A, Klint P, Visser J (2000) Domain-specific languages: an annotated bibliography. Sigplan Notices 35(6):26–36Van Welie M, Trætteberg H (2000) Interaction patterns in user interfaces. In 7th. Pattern Languages of Programs Conference (pp. 13–16)Weber B, Reichert M, Rinderle S (2008) Change patterns and change support features - enhancing flexibility in process-aware information systems. Data Knowl Eng 66:438–466Yu J, Sheng QZ, Han J, Wu Y, Liu C (2012) A semantically enhanced service repository for user-centric service discovery and management. Data Knowl Eng 72:202–21

ECA Perspectives - Requirements, Applications, Technology

In the last years we have developed a platform for the realization of embodied (conversational) agents, in a distributed logic programming framework. In this paper we will present an overview of our work, by discussing the requirements that acted as our guidelines for design decisions during development, some of the applications that have served as target demonstrators for developing and testing new functionality, and the (distributed logic programming) technology which we used for the realization of the platform and the implementation of our STEP scripting language. Although the focus of our paper will primarily be our own DLP+X3D platform, we believe that our discussion along the perspectives of requirements, applications and technology might be more generally worthwhile in establishing the relative merits of the operational use of ECA-technology. At the end of this paper, we will moreover provide some hints of how to approach the experimental validation of the (possible) benefits of embodied conversational agents in user applications