Systems for Challenged Network Environments.

Developing regions face significant challenges in network access, making even simple network tasks unpleasant and rich media prohibitively difficult to access. Even as cellular network coverage is approaching a near-universal reach, good network connectivity remains scarce and expensive in many emerging markets. The underlying theme in this dissertation is designing network systems that better accommodate users in emerging markets. To do so, this dissertation begins with a nuanced analysis of content access behavior for web users in developing regions. This analysis finds the personalization of content access---and the fragmentation that results from it---to be significant factors in undermining many existing web acceleration mechanisms. The dissertation explores content access behavior from logs collected at shared internet access sites, as well as user activity information obtained from a commercial social networking service with over a hundred million members worldwide. Based on these observations, the dissertation then discusses two systems designed for improving end-user experience in accessing and using content in constrained networks. First, it deals with the challenge of distributing private content in these networks. By leveraging the wide availability of cellular telephones, the dissertation describes a system for personal content distribution based on user access behavior. The system enables users to request future data accesses, and it schedules content transfers according to current and expected capacity. Second, the dissertation looks at routing bulk data in challenged networks, and describes an experimentation platform for building systems for challenged networks. This platform enables researchers to quickly prototype systems for challenged networks, and iteratively evaluate these systems using mobility and network emulation. The dissertation describes a few data routing systems that were built atop this experimentation platform. Finally, the dissertation discusses the marketplace and service discovery considerations that are important in making these systems viable for developing-region use. In particular, it presents an extensible, auction-based market platform that relies on widely available communication tools for conveniently discovering and trading digital services and goods in developing regions. Collectively, this dissertation brings together several projects that aim to understand and improve end-user experience in challenged networks endemic to developing regions.Ph.D.Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91401/1/azarias_1.pd

Enhancing Collaborative CRM with Mobile Technologies

Mobile technology offers a high potential to significantly transform the ways how a company can interact with their customers and even with own employees. In recent years researchers started to analyze those potentials from the perspective of customer relationship management (CRM) but mainly concentrated on traditional business-to-customer (B2C) relationships. The concept of collaborative CRM extends this view of traditional CRM to virtual organizations and networked businesses. While the concept of collaborative CRM has been discussed by several authors already, the impact of mobile technology is still open to research. This paper investigates the role of mobile technology in collaborative CRM based on existing research, scenarios and supporting systems. The goal is to increase insight about the current role of mobile devices such as smartphones or personal digital agents (PDA) in collaborative CRM business scenarios and the support of these scenarios by CRM systems. From the broad scope of collaborative CRM the focus of this research is on collaboration with customers. The findings show that current mobile scenarios merely incorporate the collaborative CRM concept and that CRM systems provide only basic functionalities for incorporating mobile devices in collaborative CRM processes

Brownie: A Platform for Conducting NeuroIS Experiments

In the NeuroIS field, experimental software needs to simultaneously present experimental stimuli to participants while recording, analyzing, or displaying neurophysiological measures. For example, a researcher might record a user’s heart beat (neurophysiological measure) as the user interacts with an e-commerce website (stimulus) to track changes in user arousal or show a user’s changing arousal levels during an exciting game. In this paper, we identify requirements for a NeuroIS experimental platform that we call Brownie and present its architecture and functionality. We then evaluate Brownie via a literature review and a case study that demonstrates Brownie’s capability to meet the requirements in a complex research context. We also verify Brownie’s usability via a quantitative study with prospective experimenters who implemented a test experiment in Brownie and an alternative software. We summarize the salient features of Brownie as follows: 1) it integrates neurophysiological measurements, 2) it incorporates real-time processing of neurophysiological data, 3) it facilitates research on individual and group behavior in the lab, 4) it offers a large variety of options for presenting experimental stimuli, and 5) it is open source and easily extensible with open source libraries. In summary, we conclude that Brownie is innovative in its potential to reduce barriers for IS researchers by fostering replicability and research collaboration and to support NeuroIS and interdisciplinary research in cognate areas, such as management, economics, or human-computer interaction

Co-design and mass customization in the Portuguese footwear cluster: an exploratory study

In the present, consumers tend to be more knowledgeable and interventive, requiring an active role in the way how they relate to brands and products. To meet this need, several sectors of the fashion industry saw this as a market opportunity and adopted approaches of Collaborative Design and Mass Customization. The footwear sector was not indifferent to this new paradigm of creation, production, distribution, and consumption, and several worldwide brands adopted innovative strategies. In Portugal, despite footwear being a mature industry with a strong tradition and worldwide recognition, it is necessary to continuously invest in innovation-based competitiveness, exploring the opportunities of Industry 4.0. Thus, the study seeks to analyse this important sector of the Portuguese economy, in order to perceive the acceptance, vision, and expectations regarding the approaches of Co-design and Mass Customization. In this way, seven companies with national relevance were studied based on a questionnaire survey. Findings show the industry's interest in Co-design and customization, despite the concern about the effort and risk associated to the transition and implementation of the productive approach. Relevant data for the development of collaborative models of footwear customization are gathered in this study.This work is supported by Project UID/CTM/00264/2019 of 2C2T – Centre for Textile Science and Technology, funded by National Founds through FCT/MCTES and by FAMEST Project (projeto de IDT em co-promoção mobilizador n. 24529, 2017-2020)

Operating market based regulation service using software agents compliant with NERC\u27s control performance standards

With the changing scenario for procurement of energy it becomes necessary to understand the process of obtaining energy from a diverse set of suppliers capable of providing substantial amounts of electric power at competitive prices. Sufficient insight has been gained in the energy brokerage system design and planning owing to experiences in the recently established markets especially the California market. It becomes contextual to analyze and understand the procurement of ancillary services, which are generally bundled as part of the wholesale energy supply chain, using a similarly competitive environment having a number of players that provide electric power for such services.;The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to provide a simulation package for conducting competitive auctions using software agents for the regulation service auction market, and (2) to demonstrate the compliance of a power system, employing Automatic Generation Control with parameters obtained from such a market, with North American Electric Reliability Council\u27s performance standards. The package employs a flexible and extensible Java-based agent development environment, MADKIT, to simulate the auctions for regulation service, and MATLAB/SIMULINK models with a fuzzy controller to simulate the power system. The framework is tested using a sample three-area power system, where the parameters for regulation service in the second area are obtained from a competitive auction market. A bidding strategy based on fuzzy logic is also designed and tested for ensuring good profit for a bidding supplier in the auctions

Open source building alliance ecology : the Internet framework for consumer driven participative design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007.Pages 146 and 147 blank.Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-137).Open Source strategies have become powerful tools for the development of innovative products in various industries (Von Hippel, 2006). Success stories in computer and clothing manufacturing signify that the adoption of Open Source practices may improve service standards and productivity (Clayton, 2001; Thomle & Von Hippel, 2002). Although Open Source strategies have been adapted in many design industries for satisfying customer demands in customized products, no one has successfully implemented an effective process for integrating Open Source into the building industries (Herbert, 1981, Larson et al., 2004). In an attempt to overcome many of the same barriers to product maturity such ineffective collaboration, lack of data management (Shah, 2003; Rothfuss, 2002), and limitations of product distribution channels, a new participative Open Source platform for transforming building design processes and economics is suggested (Larson et al., 2004). This thesis reexamines the basic assumptions of how building products are distributed through the Open Source environment.(cont.) By analyzing the impact of e-Business and Internet technology driving community participation, the integration of (1) four online Business models: Dell, Open Source, iTunes, and eBay, and (2) the advent of mass- customization through the revolution of Internet technology, Computer Aided Design (CAD), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) for architecture and architectural product design and development will be established. The results of this evaluation identify the effective factors for the Internet augmentation framework to achieve the usability of Open Source for the design-build housing industry, and reinforce the changing relationship between homebuyers, architects, and manufacturers prior to making a final housing product.by Kalaya Kovidvisith.S.M

From Mass Customization to Collaborative Customer CoDesign

The idea of integrating users into the design and production process is a promising strategy for companies being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. The use of e-business applications has been discussed as a approach for mass customization for over one decade. There is a huge amount of literature on manufacturing and information systems for mass customization. However, there has been little research looking at the role of the customer within the co-design process. Customers face new uncertainties and risks (“mass confusion”) when acting as co-designers. We discuss possible risks evolving during the interaction between customers and suppliers. We propose solutions for the “mass confusion” problem, and we challenge the assumption made by most mass customization researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between the customer and the supplier. We envision a different way of addressing the problem by using communities instead of one-to-one relationships. The objective of our paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design

Online Learning in the Business Environment

This paper summarizes the discussion at an AMCIS 2005 panel concerned with the significant use of e-learning in the corporate environment. The panel discussion considered e-learning in the both University and corporate environments with the objective of determining what lessons one might learn from the other. While both uses of e-learning are in their infancy, both are expanding very significantly, both have similar but slightly varying objectives, and both have similar drivers and constraints. The paper concludes by providing a list of potential problem areas and matters for consideration in providing education in this way, including the design of learning modules and their content, the size of these modules and their relevance to the workplace

The Roles of Corporate IT Infastructure and their Impact on IS Effectiveness

In the strategic alignment model of Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) [1] IT infrastructure has an important but only implicitly defined role. According to evolving literature, IT infrastructure serves many different purposes in large companies. We outline the main missions (roles) of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure and its contribution to IS effectiveness and study the relationship of IT infrastructure with alignment processes and strategic integration. Our empirical tests with data from almost one hundred large companies resulted in three IT infrastructure roles, which reflect the IS communality, strategic, and flexibility dimensions of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure. The roles were not symmetrically related to the IS effectiveness and alignment perspectives. IT infrastructure roles had a significant interplay with strategic integration in improving IS effectiveness. However, the interplay of IT infrastructure roles with alignment perspectives had only marginal effects. Implications of the results for research and practice are discussed