Achieving a designed customer experience across multiple delivery platforms: A telco perspective

'Customer experience' is a term that covers a wide range of activities that take place between suppliers and users of products and services. LaSalle and Britton define it as 'a holistic experience which involves a person - as opposed to a customer - as a whole at different levels and in every interaction between such person and a company' (2003). This research considers a key aspect of such an holistic experience: that which is embodied in the product or service under consideration. In the context of increasing mobile technology convergence, the paper considers new approaches that focus on developing the necessary underlying enablers and common interaction flows that are required to deliver a designed experience, taking into account the increasing number of mobile operating systems and service delivery platforms. Ultimately these models move towards allowing users to 'co-create their own unique experiences' (Pralahad and Ramswamy, 2004). The convergence between IT and telecommunications domains presents a unique challenge to product and service designers. Services are increasingly accessible via multiple delivery devices and delivery networks. This trend has been seen most recently in the advent of Internet based services being delivered via mobile phones where 'mobile service delivery and technologies have become the glue between previously secluded 'telecom' and "IT' domains' (Karrberg and Liebenau, 2006). At the same time network operators are trying to tighten their relationship with their customers by offering 'sticky' services aimed at raising the barriers to customer mobility. These two trends lead to a new design challenge: how to design a recognisably consistent and compelling product customer experience that applies over all delivery services, operating systems and networks. Solutions to this problem have to date been either technology led, focussing on integrated delivery platforms, or reliant on rule-based design. Crucial to this analysis is the 'role Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item

Enhancing User-Engagement in the Design Process through Augmented Reality Applications

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are often perceived as the most impactful method to enhance the communication between the designer and the client during the iterative design process. However, the significance of designing the User Interface (UI) and the User Experience (UX) are often underestimated. To intercede, this research aims to employ new and existing techniques to develop UI's, and comparatively assess ``the accuracy and completeness with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments'' (Stone, 2005) - a notion this research delineates as `effectiveness'. Prompted by the work of key scholars, the developed UI's were assessed through the lens of existing UI evaluation techniques, including: Usability Heuristics (Nielsen, 1994) and Visual and Cognitive Heuristics (Zuk and Carpendale, 2006). In partnership with PTW Architects, characteristics such as the rapidity and complexity of interactions, in conjunction with the interface's simplicity and intuitiveness, were extracted from 15 trials underwent by architectural practitioners. The outcomes of this research highlights strategies for the effective development of user interface design for mobile augmented reality applications

Hank Haeusler presents Architecture in the Age of A.I

The lecture introduces Second Machine Age Technologies such as Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence that are dominating discussions of the future of work in most professions around the world and in Australia. While several professions have embraced Second Machine Age Technologies into their business early and in a deeper level the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) Industry is still in an infant stage. Yet there are clear signs on the horizon that venture capital investors in Silicon Valley or companies like Alphabet (Googles mother company) turn their attention to the construction industry, hence enforcing a change of the AEC industry from the outside at a rapid speed. Through our teaching, research and software development at UNSW Computational Design we hope to offer local company graduates that bring much needed computational and computing skills into the profession; develop new knowledge on living with 21st century technologies for the AEC industry; and develop and program platforms that change the way architecture and urban design is produced and documented. This lecture on Urban Design will discuss upcoming issues and challenges and presents the development of a synthetic design method; a tool named ‘Giraffe’, a two-sided network platform for the AEC industry that gives non-computational designers access to computational tools that assists the synthetic design method and UrbanAI a test case that combines machine learning and Computational Design for a rapid development of cities. Presented Thursday 22 August 2019

Investigating the adaptability and implementation of computational design methods in concept design taking plasterboard opportunities for dimensional coordination and waste reduction as a case study

Construction material offcuts is a data problem that can largely be avoided by dimensional coordination during concept design. Besides the environmental benefits, early phase coordination is beneficial to the overall design process as it integrates information not typically considered until later in the design process. However, taking reality-changing actions is often challenged by uncertainty, time constraints, and lack of integration of available tools. Acknowledging the potential of computational design in enabling architects to manage design and coordination complexities and taking plasterboard opportunities for dimensional coordination, the paper presents a review and assessment of the existing methods to interrogate what, when, and how are these adaptable to the task. The study shows that ML-based methods outperform other methods and concludes that leveraging computational design powers to reduce offcuts is not a question of a tool, but one of a strategy. Eventually, the future steps to achieving such a strategy are discussed

Enabling audience participation and collective content generation through urban media as a diagnostic method in urban planning

Interaction design is something perhaps few people think about. Yet it is one of our most important areas of research. The world is now changed every few years by information and communication technologies, and it is interaction design that has to make these changes work for people. In 2015, such changes involve computing’s return to the world at large— back “into the wild”. There are little slivers of computing everywhere these days, not only in mobiles and laptops, but also throughout buildings, in the urban environment, attached to natural objects, or even to us. A complex web of data networks links up all these slivers of computing. This is called the “internet of things” or “ambient intelligence”. The fullness of this ambient intelligence at work is hidden from us, yet it is also increasingly in close proximity to what we do. Executive Summary This 1-year Blue Sky project allowed us to establish a relationship with the Willoughby City Council (WCC), who have come on board as partner for an ARC Linkage Project proposal (currently under review). Based on the fruitful collaboration, WCC have further agreed to fund the upcoming Media Architecture Biennale as venue partner (valued at up to $40,000). The Blue Sky studies funded from the Henry Halloran Trust led to 1 book chapter, 4 conference publications, 2 workshop papers, and a digital handbook. The project set out to study the use of so-called ‘urban screens’ for enabling audience participation in discussions around civic topics. For this purpose we partnered with Urban Screen Productions and the Willoughby City Council, who provided us with access to their urban screen at the Concourse in Chatswood. This screen posed a particularly interesting media platform for our research, since it is placed in a less than ideal position and in an unaccommodating environment. The project involved the iterative deployment of a total of three audience participation platforms: A platform consisting of a) a small audio device with a gesture sensor to record votes and b) an iPad polling app for recording responses to polar questions. A platform consisting of a) the iPad polling app from (1) in Chatswood, b) the iPad polling app with a polar visualisation on the urban screen at the Concourse, and c) a full-body voting application, in which people could answer polar questions by waving their arms at the screen. A platform/setup consisting of an open response visualisation and iPad app at the Concourse in Chatswood in conjunction with a pop-up concept for engaging the local community into a civic discourse. These platforms were deployed for a total of 9 days distributed throughout the second half of the project duration (3 days at the University of Sydney campus in July 2014, 3 days at the Concourse in July 2014, 1 day at the Concourse in September 2014 during the Chatswood StreetFair, 1 day in December 2014 at the Concourse, and 1 day in February 2015 during the Chinese New Year Festival in Chatswood). The project outcomes include: A project website (http://cityconcepts.org/) that serves as online repository for the research and findings developed through the project. The website includes an online blog that aggregates the state of the field, and which we will continue to populate with our findings and future projects in this area. Two documentary videos of the platforms, their deployment, and the studies conducted. Public lecture by CI Foth as part of the Urban Research Festival in March 2014, and presentations by CIs Tomitsch, Foth, Haeusler, and McArthur as part of the Digital Arts Symposium hosted by Urban Screen Productions in collaboration with UNSW Art+Design, in June 2015. 
 A handbook developed for urban planners and local councils about the use of urban media for community engagement and published as a free resource online