The influences of the just-in-time social cloud on real world decisions

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-224).People have intertemporal biases towards choices that result in immediate gratification versus delayed rewards. The social context can accentuate or downplay preferences towards virtues or vices when making choices in the moment. Especially in our modern world where social networks are virtually accessible at anytime, from anywhere, how our day-today decisions are affected by the "always-on" connection to our social networks via mobile devices is an open question. By understanding the dimensions of these social forces, we can utilize the just-in-time social cloud to nudge people towards decisions that have long term benefits for health and finances, while counterbalancing the forces of the marketers that trigger our impulses towards immediate temptations that we may regret later. This work presents an empirical inquiry into the effect of just-in-time social influences in human decision-making. In order to understand these effects and discover their parameters, I design and deploy real-world experiments with the just-in-time social cloud using mobile phones as platforms for just-in-time social influence. The Open Transaction Network forms the basis of generating just-in-time social networks based on the transactions shared by people in the context of commerce. The Open Transaction Network is extended to several systems to conduct real-world experiments involving real choices. By augmenting mobile commerce applications with just-in-time social networks, I design a mobile commerce environment that can socially influence our just-in-time choices. The Open Credit Card Application Framework augments existing methods of payment by using transactions as triggers to enable mobile applications that facilitate just-in-time decisions or reflections. Friends within communities show significant similarity in their hourly transaction behaviors. Varying manifestations of the just-in-time social cloud (individual friends, groups of friends and popularity information) can be used to nudge people's choices in the dimensions of taste, price and time as they decide.by Kwan Hong Lee.Ph.D

Mobile Service Awareness via Auditory Notifications

Placed within the realms of Human Computer Interaction, this thesis contributes towards the goals of Ubiquitous Computing, where mobile devices can provide anywhere, anytime support to people’s everyday activities. With interconnected computing devices distributed in our habitat, services relevant to any situation may be always available to address our needs. However, despite the enhanced capabilities of mobile phones, users had been reluctant to adopt any services other than calls and messaging. This has been changing more recently, especially since the launch of the iPhone, with users getting access to hundreds of services. The original question motivating the research presented in this thesis “How can we improve mobile service usage?” is in the interest of enthusiasts of mobile services as well as slow adopters. We propose the concept of ‘mobile service awareness’ and operationalise it through the more focused research question: “How can we design for non-intrusive yet informative auditory mobile service notifications?” We design and conduct a series of surveys, laboratory experiments and longitudinal field studies to address this question. Our results, also informed by literature on context-aware computing, awareness, notification systems and auditory interface design, produce two distinct major contributions. First, we provide a set of conclusions on the relative efficiency of auditory icons and earcons as auditory notifications. Second, we produce a set of design guidelines for the two types of notifications, based on the critical evaluation of the methodologies we develop and adapt from the literature. Although these contributions were made with mobile service notification in mind, they are arguably useful for designers of any auditory interfaces conveying complex concepts (such as mobile services) and are used in attention demanding contexts.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Determinanten der Endkundenakzeptanz mobilkommunikationsbasierter Zahlungssysteme: eine theoretische und empirische Analyse

Angesichts der Fülle an gescheiterten Versuchen, mobilkommunikationsbasierte Zahlungssysteme (MBZS) als Ergänzung oder Alternative zu gängigen Zahlungsverfahren im Endkundenmarkt zu etablieren, beabsichtigt die Dissertation einen Beitrag zur Erklärung endkundenseitiger Akzeptanzprozesse innerhalb des Mobile Commerce und zur Erschließung des betriebswirtschaftlichen Potentials von MBZS zu leisten. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet eine von theoretischen und sachlogischen Überlegungen geleitete Formulierung von Hypothesen zu Einflussfaktoren der MBZS-Akzeptanz. Diese werden in ein Akzeptanzmodell überführt, welches genutzt werden kann, um Präferenzen von Endkunden zu erkennen, Gründe für unterschiedliche Akzeptanzniveaus zu verstehen sowie Determinanten des wahrgenommenen Risikos zu identifizieren. Die strukturanalytische Überprüfung des Akzeptanzmodells erfolgt mittels PLS. Abschließend werden aus den Ergebnissen der empirischen Studie resultierende Implikationen für die (Marketing-)Praxis diskutiert

SmartRestaurant: A report on the development of a NFC-based mobile application

8th International Joint conference on Software Technologies, ICSOFT 2013; Reykjavik; Iceland; 29 July 2013 through 31 July 2013This paper presents as a case study our experience gathered along the development of a mobile application prototype to be used by restaurant clients. The application, named SmartRestaurant, uses Near Field Communication (NFC) connectivity and runs on Android. It can be used in restaurants to load its menu, and other information provided by the restaurant, through scanning a NFC tag with a mobile phone or other NFC enabled device. Additionally, the application should allow users to store and share data with others. The paper presents the lessons learned during the development process used in this case study, including the functionalities already implemented, the future work, and also the process successes and failures