On Measuring the Difficulty of Scrabble-like Problems

Scrabble-like tasks have increased in popularity as a means of exploring cognitive phenomena, such as embodiedproblem solving, mastery, and creativity. Many of these tasks make assumptions about the key factors driving relative difficultyof word-finding problems; these factors include average frequency of words produced, number of words produced, and numberof readily apparent bi-grams in the initial presentation of the letters. This study measures the effects of each of these factors oncognitive load by systematically and empirically exploring such factors, comparing how these various attributes influence thenumber of words participants produce in different circumstances

A Service Science Perspective on the Role of ICT in Service Innovation

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often considered the main enabler of service innovation. The unique role of ICT in service innovation, however, is not fully understood and advancing knowledge in this area emerged as the top research priority in the fields of service science and information systems research. To date, substantial insights regarding the role of ICT in service innovation are not available, and new theoretical lenses and perspectives are needed to develop these. In this conceptual paper, we define service innovation as service system reconfiguration, which allows us to classify the role of ICT in this process more succinctly and ultimately overcome the shortcomings in the existing body of literature. Specifically, we deconstruct and extend previous views of ICT as a “black box” in service innovation research, and focus on the actual innovation process and its mechanisms. We define and delineate these as resource shifting and resource access, explain the role of ICTs in each, and outline further research opportunities that result from these new insights

Perspective: Technology Management in the Service Sector

This paper reports out of the symposium on \u27Technology Management in the Service Sector\u27 which was held as a part of Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology in 2007. The objectives of the symposium were: to explore how technology management research and education can contribute to the evolving field of services science, management and engineering; to define a research agenda for the field of engineering and technology management that addresses the critical needs of the evolving service economy and to discuss needed funding structures and programs to foster service oriented research. We tackled these issues in two ways. First, the key leaders from academia, industry and government presented the critical issues and challenges that presently exist. Then, small groups analysed the selected topics in depth. We identified three main components of service science: value, people and technology, and explored how researchers in the field of technology management would tackle this new phenomenon

From data to value: A nine-factor framework for data-based value creation in information-intensive services

Service is a key context for the application of IT, as IT digitizes information interactions in service and facilitates value creation, thereby contributing to service innovation. The recent proliferation of big data provides numerous opportunities for information-intensive services (IISs), in which information interactions exert the greatest effect on value creation. In the modern data-rich economy, understanding mechanisms and related factors of data-based value creation in IISs is essential for using IT to improve such services. This study identified nine key factors that characterize this data-based value creation: (1) data source, (2) data collection, (3) data, (4) data analysis, (5) information on the data source, (6) information delivery, (7) customer (information user), (8) value in information use, and (9) provider network. These factors were identified and defined through six action research projects with industry and government that used specific datasets to design new IISs and by analyzing data usage in 149 IIS cases. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of these factors for describing, analyzing, and designing the entire value creation chain, from data collection to value creation, in IISs. The main contribution of this study is to provide a simple yet comprehensive and empirically tested basis for the use and management of data to facilitate service value creation

On the potential of epistemic actions for self-cuing: Multiple orientations can prime 2D shape recognition and use

Epistemic actions are physical actions people take more to simplify their internal problem-solving processes than to bring themselves closer to an external goal. Consider how when playing the video game Tetris, experts routinely rotate falling twodimensional shapes more than is necessary to place the shapes. One reason for such apparently unnecessary actions is that they actually help the player make placement decisions. Such actions might facilitate placement decisions if additional previews of the shape afforded by rotating it provide information about the board, particularly when there is no direct perceptual match between the shape and the board at the time of decision. The study presented here tests the hypothesis that several distinct previews of a two-dimensional shape can improve a person’s ability to recognize and use that shape when it is not correctly oriented at the time of decision. Results show that indeed task performance and recognition are faster with two different orientations than with only one. Thus, it is possible that Tetris players rotate two-dimensional Tetris shapes manually to see them in more than one orientation, as this can lead to faster decisions

On the Trail of Information Searchers

In this paper, we sketch a model of how people search for information on the World Wide Web. Our interest lies in the cognitive properties and internal representations used in the search for information. We first collected behavioral data from individuals searching for answers to specific questions on the web, and we then analyzed these data to learn what searchers were doing and thinking. One finding was that individuals focus on key nodes when recalling their searches, and that these key nodes help structure memory. A second finding was that people tend to use the same search patterns over and over, and that they recall their searches in terms of their standard patterns—regardless of what they actually did. Overall, our results suggest that people form cognitive maps of web space in much the same the way that they form cognitive maps of physical space