A New Consumerism: The influence of social technologies on product design

Social media has enabled a new style of consumerism. Consumers are no longer passive recipients; instead they are assuming active and participatory roles in product design and production, facilitated by interaction and collaboration in virtual communities. This new participatory culture is blurring the boundaries between the specific roles of designer, consumer and producer, creating entrepreneurial opportunities for designers, and empowering consumers to influence product strategies. Evolving designer-consumer interactions are enabling an enhanced model of co-production, through a value-adding social exchange that is driving changes in consumer behaviour and influencing both product strategies and design practice. The consumer is now a knowledgeable participant, or prosumer, who can contribute to user–centered research through crowd sourcing, collaborate and co-create through open-source or open-innovation platforms, assist creative endeavors by pledging venture capital through crowd funding and advocate the product in blogs and forums. Social media- enabled product implementation strategies working in conjunction with digital production technologies (e.g. additive manufacture), enable consumer-directed adaptive customisation, product personalisation, and self-production, with once passive consumers becoming product produsers. Not only is social media driving unprecedented consumer engagement and significant behavioural change, it is emerging as a major enabler of design entrepreneurship, creating new collaborative opportunities. Innovative processes in design practice are emerging, such as the provision of digital artifacts and customisable product frameworks, rather than standardised manufactured solutions. This paper examines the influence of social media-enabled product strategies on the methodology of the next generation of product designers, and discusses the need for an educational response

A fourfold typology of living labs: an empirical investigation amongst the ENoLL community

Living Labs can be seen as a means to structure user involvement in innovation processes. However, in this rather young research domain, there is no consensus yet regarding supporting theories and frameworks. This has resulted in a wide variety of projects and approaches being called ‘Living Labs’, which leaves a clear conceptualization and definition a task in progress. Within this research paper we propose a fourfold categorization of Living Labs based on a literature review and validated by an empirical investigation of the characteristics of 64 ICT Living Labs from the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). The four types are Living Labs for collaboration and knowledge support activities, original ‘American’ Living Labs, Living Labs as extension to testbeds and Living Labs that support context research and co-creation with users

SensorCloud: Towards the Interdisciplinary Development of a Trustworthy Platform for Globally Interconnected Sensors and Actuators

Although Cloud Computing promises to lower IT costs and increase users' productivity in everyday life, the unattractive aspect of this new technology is that the user no longer owns all the devices which process personal data. To lower scepticism, the project SensorCloud investigates techniques to understand and compensate these adoption barriers in a scenario consisting of cloud applications that utilize sensors and actuators placed in private places. This work provides an interdisciplinary overview of the social and technical core research challenges for the trustworthy integration of sensor and actuator devices with the Cloud Computing paradigm. Most importantly, these challenges include i) ease of development, ii) security and privacy, and iii) social dimensions of a cloud-based system which integrates into private life. When these challenges are tackled in the development of future cloud systems, the attractiveness of new use cases in a sensor-enabled world will considerably be increased for users who currently do not trust the Cloud.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, published as technical report of the Department of Computer Science of RWTH Aachen Universit

Analogue switch-off vs digital switch-on: rethinking policy strategies in the digital television era

In the last few decades, the traditional television landscape has come under pressure and the diffusion of digital television (DTV) services emerged as a hot issue. Especially for policy makers, access to DTV is considered a key element in the further development of the information society. Facilitating equal access for all to the new possibilities offered by digital television should be the central objective. In this context, policy makers are confronted with various challenges: How can they facilitate a smooth transition from analogue to digital terrestrial television? How should they handle digital dividend issues? In dealing with these topics, this article stresses the importance of a user-oriented approach

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review

The digital transformation of manufacturing (a phenomenon also known as "Industry 4.0" or "Smart Manufacturing") is finding a growing interest both at practitioner and academic levels, but is still in its infancy and needs deeper investigation. Even though current and potential advantages of digital manufacturing are remarkable, in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability, customization, and flexibility, only a limited number of companies has already developed ad hoc strategies necessary to achieve a superior performance. Through a systematic review, this study aims at assessing the current state of the art of the academic literature regarding the paradigm shift occurring in the manufacturing settings, in order to provide definitions as well as point out recurring patterns and gaps to be addressed by future research. For the literature search, the most representative keywords, strict criteria, and classification schemes based on authoritative reference studies were used. The final sample of 156 primary publications was analyzed through a systematic coding process to identify theoretical and methodological approaches, together with other significant elements. This analysis allowed a mapping of the literature based on clusters of critical themes to synthesize the developments of different research streams and provide the most representative picture of its current state. Research areas, insights, and gaps resulting from this analysis contributed to create a schematic research agenda, which clearly indicates the space for future evolutions of the state of knowledge in this field

Assessing the value of the information provision for enhancing the autonomy of mobility impaired users. Madrid pilot Site Study.

A City is the space where every person acquires the citizen condition, which demands access to multiple services and facilities, and develops social relations in a free and equal condition of options. A lack of accessibility limits independency and autonomy. Thus, the relationship between “sustainable development” and “accessibility for all” becomes clearer, and both goals reinforce each other. In this sense, information plays a key role in order to overcome existing barriers, specially for people who rarely use public transport, have impaired mobility, or make a particular journey for the first time. The impact and benefits is linked with public transport as a “facilitator” of mobility, and, in particular, for the aim of intermodality. The usefulness of information that should be provided (both the information itself and how is offered) to mobility impaired users (MI users) is discussed on this paper based on following of the ASK-IT project that has being carry out on Madrid. The work was done in close cooperation with representatives of all different types of MI user groups