A strategy for the customer brand engagement (CBE) –a data product by Axians user engagement and onboarding –the case of “stayaway Covid”

The present project proposes a strategy to be followed within the product development and management of Axians’s future Customer Brand Engagement (CBE) data product, supported by a market and legal context.It provides a review of the market trends in motion within the customer data and customer experience fields, as well as a data regulation benchmark that covers the international scene. Furthermore, it suggests a tailor-made three-step product framework to be adopted by the product teams in order to future-proof it. Then, it recommends actions to enhance the product by ensuring user engagement with an app that would add a new relevant data source to the model based on a user study. Finally, it presents an overview and state of art of the technology available to deliver and execute the remaining data sources the product will model and provide insights from

VCare: A Personal Emergency Response System to Promote Safe and Independent Living Among Elders Staying by Themselves in Community or Residential Settings

‘Population aging’ is a growing concern for most of us living in the twenty first century, primarily because many of us in the next few years will have a senior person to care for - spending money towards their healthcare expenditures AND/OR having to balance a full-time job with the responsibility of care-giving, travelling from another city to be with this elderly citizen who might be our parent, grand-parent or even community elders. As informal care-givers, if somehow we were able to monitor the day-to-day activities of our elderly dependents, and be alerted when wrong happens to them that would be of great help and lower the care-giving burden considerably. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can certainly help in such a scenario, with tools and techniques that ensure safe living for the individual we are caring for, and save us from a lot of worry by providing us with anytime access into their lives or activities, and as a result check their functional state. However, we should be mindful of the tactics that could be adopted by harm causers to steal data stored in these products and try to curb the associated service costs. In short, we are in need of robust, cost-effective, useful, and secure solutions to help elders in our society to ‘age gracefully’. This work is a little step taken towards that direction. ‘Population aging’ is a growing concern for most of us living in the twenty first century, primarily because many of us in the next few years will have a senior person to care for - spending money towards their healthcare expenditures AND/OR having to balance a full-time job with the responsibility of care-giving, travelling from another city to be with this elderly citizen who might be our parent, grand-parent or even community elders. As informal care-givers, if somehow we were able to monitor the day-to-day activities of our elderly dependents, and be alerted when wrong happens to them that would be of great help and lower the care-giving burden considerably. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can certainly help in such a scenario, with tools and techniques that ensure safe living for the individual we are caring for, and save us from a lot of worry by providing us with anytime access into their lives or activities, and as a result check their functional state. However, we should be mindful of the tactics that could be adopted by harm causers to steal data stored in these products and try to curb the associated service costs. In short, we are in need of robust, cost-effective, useful, and secure solutions to help elders in our society to ‘age gracefully’. This work is a little step taken towards that direction. Advisor: Tadeusz Wysock

How to Create an Innovation Accelerator

Too many policy failures are fundamentally failures of knowledge. This has become particularly apparent during the recent financial and economic crisis, which is questioning the validity of mainstream scholarly paradigms. We propose to pursue a multi-disciplinary approach and to establish new institutional settings which remove or reduce obstacles impeding efficient knowledge creation. We provided suggestions on (i) how to modernize and improve the academic publication system, and (ii) how to support scientific coordination, communication, and co-creation in large-scale multi-disciplinary projects. Both constitute important elements of what we envision to be a novel ICT infrastructure called "Innovation Accelerator" or "Knowledge Accelerator".Comment: 32 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

An Investigation of Online Navigation Patterns of Consumers Across Cultures

Researchers have been interested in understanding the online purchase intentions of consumers. It’s interesting to see why consumers differ in the way they navigate the Internet. However, it’s still not very well explored as to what role a country\u27s cultural variables play in online purchase behavior of its users. The goal of this dissertation is to identify the determinant variables of online buying behavior of users from different cultural environments. Hofstede\u27s cultural dimensions are used to understand some of the differences. This study also conceptualizes attitudes toward search on mobile devices vs. desktops. The search behavior on mobile devices is analyzed based on demographic profiles of the e-shoppers. In Chapter 1, the background of the research is set by looking into the web adoption patterns for multiple needs, and the distinction is made between the users’ behaviors focused on actual use of the services offered versus the internet access for general purpose i.e., without any specific service in mind. This helps segment the consumers based on demographic variables and the social context of the user. The primary factors affecting the internet penetration rate in different countries are looked into too. This gives an important perspective of the key foundation of the e-commerce industry i.e., access to Internet to the populace — which forms the superset of potential buyers. The effects of high education, per capita income and telephone connectivity are explored. It\u27s intuitive to see that credit card penetration level will have a positive correlation with the online purchase rate. In this research, it is found that countries with low credit card penetration have less e-commerce even though the cash on delivery option is available there. In chapter 2, the consumer behavior in different countries is analyzed through the lens of Hofstede\u27s cultural dimensions – Uncertainty avoidance (UAI), Individualism vs. Collectivism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS) and Long-term orientation (LTO). We use the browsing behavior data of the top 5 e-commerce websites of 45 countries obtained through the Alexa website. In order to approach a conceptualization of cultural dimensions with regards to the web, we work with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and consider how cultures might affect user interface design. It is found that consumers from countries that are high on uncertainty avoidance search for longer durations. In addition to that, consumers from countries high on collectivism are more likely to come to a shopping website from social media websites as compared to that from search engine websites. With the data collected from Globalwebindex platform, the online purchasing drivers for 36 countries are also explored and it is found that the social network\u27s influence on purchase decision is more for countries with low IDV scores and the chances to buy on social network are less for users of high IDV countries. Similarly, we find that users from countries with low UAI and high IDV are more likely to use private browsing window during the online purchase as it protects the users\u27 browsing behavior data on e-commerce websites. And it\u27s also found that users from countries low on IDV are more likely to write post-purchase online reviews. The results support the conjecture that examining the cultural dimensions and customers\u27 attitudes for online shopping is critically important for e-commerce players intending to make their mark in the global arena. They should consider these different types of online buying behaviors when it comes to web design. In chapter 3, we attempt to model consumer choice behavior towards web search engines, taking into account users\u27 demographic and cultural dimensions too. The factors that contribute towards the choice of a consideration set of web search engines are explored—using consideration set theory. The choice of the number of web search engines is modeled, taking into account three different categories of variables i.e., ‘who’ – which includes consumer characteristics including cultural dimensions, ‘what’ – which includes information search characteristics and ‘why’ – which includes attitudinal characteristics. Results of the study indicate that \u27Age\u27 and \u27Uncertainty Avoidance\u27 have significant effect on choice of number of search engines by consumers. Attitudinal characteristics don\u27t contribute significantly towards explaining the choice behavior towards web search engines but information search parameters are significant in that regard. In chapter 4, the roles of uncertainty avoidance and the demographic variables are identified in online purchase behavior of mobile-only-internet-users (MOIU) vs. desktop-internet users. It is found that the countries with high IDV scores have higher percentage of MOIU and UAI has no effect irrespective of the fact that internet access with mobile devices offers less data privacy. The more individualistic nations have better infrastructure, they have more opportunities to use other mobile devices like iPad and laptop to access the Internet. So, they are less likely to be mobile only. The effect of income per capita on a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) basis has no significant effect on MOIU. An explanation for it could be the one mentioned above—the required infrastructure not being in place for potential users to access the Internet on desktops. In addition to that, it is found that the effect of IDV scores and the age of users— on MOIU number—are significant too. Also, the young users, aged between 25 – 35 years, are much more likely to fall into the MOIU category, irrespective of which country they are from. In chapter 5, we conclude with our findings and identify the limitations and the future research directions

A framework for mobile digital literacy skills of educators using mobile technology in rural formal education

Information and communication technology (ICT) is considered a vital enabler in the quest to reduce the disparities between the developed and developing world. Developments in mobile technology have dramatically changed the ICT landscape. Mobile cellular technologies have flourished and proliferated more rapidly than any previous technology hitherto and is thus considered, at this time, the most pervasive technology in the world. However, the introduction of mobile ICT in rural formal education is faced with many challenges and ways in which to maximise its usage is still being explored. This research explores mobile digital literacy skills required by a rural educator to successfully integrate mobile technology into the classroom. This exploration used the ICT for rural education development (ICT4RED) project as its case study and added dimensions to the project through the development of a framework for mobile digital literacy skills. ICT4RED was an appropriate case for the exploration as it met the following criteria: educators were using mobile technologies in the classroom, educators had been part of the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) course offered by the ICT4RED project and educators were based in a rural resource-constrained area in South Africa. Questionnaires were used to gain insight into which skills educators rated as most important, and least important, as based on their teaching experience using mobile technologies in the classroom. The work is grounded on an interpretivist research philosophy and followed an inductive reasoning approach. Additionally, the research employed a qualitative method of analysis with a single case study, comprising of two units, facilitating a perspective of the phenomenon. Framework development was enabled through a literature review which assisted in theorising the mobile digital literacy skills. An expert review, followed by a questionnaire driven survey for educators, was conducted. The qualitative analysis revealed that most of the mobile digital literacy skills from literature were important and should be employed. The majority of educators and experts felt that the skills could not be categorised as, due to the lack of resources, most are considered very important. The lack of stable internet connection/s were also considered a major (if not the major) hindrance to successful mobile integration in rural areas. The main research question answered by this study is: How can a framework for educators’ mobile digital literacy skills support educators using mobile technology in formal rural education? The findings of this research should be significant to developers of mobile technology training programmes, as well as educators trying to successfully integrate mobile technology into their classrooms. The framework will enable both trainers and educators to prioritise skills and channel resources into the acquisition of those skills which have been identified as important by this research work.School of ComputingM. Sc. (Computing

Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with

Information Markets and Nonmarkets

As large amounts of data become available and can be communicated more easily and processed more e¤ectively, information has come to play a central role for economic activity and welfare in our age. This essay overviews contributions to the industrial organization of information markets and nonmarkets, while attempting to maintain a balance between foundational frameworks and more recent developments. We start by reviewing mechanism-design approaches to modeling the trade of information. We then cover ratings, predictions, and recommender systems. We turn to forecasting contests, prediction markets, and other institutions designed for collecting and aggregating information from decentralized participants. Finally, we discuss science as a prototypical information nonmarket with participants who interact in a non-anonymous way to produce and disseminate information. We aim to make the reader familiar with the central notions and insights in this burgeoning literature and also point to some open critical questions that future research will have to address

CAST: Proximity broadcasting as a mode of news distribution in rural Armenia

CAST (DisCovery Amplification Sustainability and InTeractions) has trialled a new community communication network in rural Armenia developing models to emerge alternative news media in a highly politically pressured national state. The project was a collaboration between the Media Innovation Studio, UK, Impact Hub Yerevan and SMART Edge Platform provider WICASTR™, Yerevan. The project also ran with the support of the United Nations Development Programme, award-winning investigative journalism outlet Hetq, and Civilnet from the Civilitas Foundation. It was a three-phase year-long pilot that ran in 2016 and 2017, funded by the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund. The aim was to: Build a lightweight community connectivity system for content distribution Generate proximity insights: new data analytics that allow publishers to pinpoint what content is consumed where Facilitate novel approaches to digital literacy by creating engaged digital communities New knowledge and impact have been created around: How to build hyperlocal proximity networks using online to offline wifi technology Future scoping information systems for remote communities New hyperlocal news data analytics for publishers Novel methods to add to media plurality in a highly politically pressured environment Strategies to improve digital literacy and community communication that can challenge a digital divid