The Force of Habit: Examining the Status Quo Bias for Using Mixed Reality in Patient Education

Using mixed reality (MR) glasses for preoperative patient education (PPE) can help patients understand the purpose and risks of surgical procedures through informative visualizations. However, patients tend to be critical regarding the use of MR glasses in healthcare and often prefer the status quo of healthcare services provided. This study explores the resistance to MR technologies in PPE through the lens of the status quo bias theory by surveying n = 171 participants. We conducted a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis revealing configurations that provide a typological understanding of patient resistance. This allows healthcare stakeholders to take more targeted interventions to promote MR adoption. Notably, the results indicate that healthcare providers need to be transparent in communicating the benefits and drawbacks of using MR, as uncertainty costs are the main driver of resistance to MR glasses in PPE

A New Way to Reflect the IS Identity? Uncovering the Intellectual Core of Podcasts

The information systems (IS) discipline has long been critically questioning its identity to determine its central research avenues, its distinction from other disciplines, and the future directions for the field. Although this question is central to all stakeholders of the IS field, so far the debates have been conducted primarily in research papers, editorial commentaries, and opinion pieces published by influential IS scholars. Our study explores how the broader IS community engages in the discourse about IS identity by examining podcasts as an increasingly popular means of communicating IS viewpoints. We apply a podcast ethnography to study the IS podcast universe, consisting of 51 shows with 660 episodes. Our preliminary findings offer insights about the stakeholders, podcast topics, and intellectual core of the audio tracks that shed light on the role of podcasts in constructing and reflecting on IS identity

Tell Me and I Forget, Involve Me and I Learn: Design and Evaluation of a Multimodal Conversational Agent for Supporting Distance Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted children’s learning routines from schools to their own homes, necessitating learning support solutions. This paper reports on a design science research project that combines augmented reality with a conversational agent to assist schoolchildren in learning complex subjects by providing verbal descriptions and interactive animations. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of multimedia learning, we derive three design principles to resolve seven issues associated with distance learning. The instantiated artifact augments text-based learning resources and facilitates learning in a contextsensitive manner through multimodal output. The proof-of-concept evaluation with 11 experienced teachers and researchers in the field of didactics confirms the usefulness of these design principles and suggests refinements of the artifact

Painting A Holistic Picture of Trust in and Adoption of Conversational Agents: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Approach

With their human-like nature, conversational agents (CAs) introduce a social component to human-computer interaction. Numerous studies have previously attempted to integrate this social component by incorporating trust into models such as the technology acceptance model (TAM) to decipher the adoption mechanisms related to CAs. Given the heterogeneity of these previous works, the aim of this paper is to integrate empirical evidence on the role and influence of trust within the nomological network of the TAM. For this purpose, we conduct a meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach based on 45 studies comprising k = 155 correlations, and N = 13,786 observations. Our findings highlight the multifaceted role of trust as a mediator transmitting the effects of the technology-related perceptions that drive the intention to use CAs. Our results present a comprehensive overview in a thriving research field that can guide both future theory building and the designs of more trustworthy CAs

Augmented and Virtual Reality Technologies in the Future of Work: User Preferences and Design Principles

Immersive technologies, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), are envisioned to become ubiquitous in future work environments. The implementation of both technologies is associated with versatile benefits, such as decreased costs, reduced physical risks, increased employee self-satisfaction, and lower resource consumption. Despite these potential benefits, the organizational diffusion of immersive technologies faces myriad challenges. For instance, usability problems along with privacy concerns have introduced technology acceptance issues. Addressing these challenges, this cumulative dissertation explores the design, application, and implications of AR and VR systems in the workplace by employing a mixed-methods approach. The contribution of this research is threefold. First, this dissertation provides descriptive insights into user preferences for immersive technologies to inform user-centered design considerations. Second, this dissertation presents design principles to guide the development of four information technology artifacts. Two of these artifacts enable VR-based collaboration in the fields of design thinking and process modeling, while the remaining two artifacts leverage AR to facilitate the crowdsourcing of human intelligence tasks and to support students in distance learning settings. Third, this dissertation develops an e³-value model for the AR and VR business ecosystem to illustrate how technology providers can transform such artifacts into economic value. Taken together, these insights improve understanding the sociotechnical interplay between humans, tasks, and immersive technologies, as well as its economic implications

The Emperor’s New Clothes or an Enduring IT Fashion? Analyzing the Lifecycle of Industry 4.0 through the Lens of Management Fashion Theory

This paper examines the recent hype around Industry 4.0 through the lens of management fashion theory to answer the question of how Industry 4.0 has emerged as a management fashion and to what extent it has diffused in organizational practice. Therefore, we conducted a comprehensive discourse lifecycle analysis based on 3920 academic and practical publications comprising a rhetoric and content analysis along with a diffusion lifecycle analysis involving selected diffusion indicators. The findings indicate that Industry 4.0 constitutes an enduring management fashion that has recently reached its peak, with the first signs for an upcoming downswing. The discourse around Industry 4.0 illustrates the concept as a panacea for business problems such as a lack of sustainability and intense global competition; however, the diffusion lifecycle analysis indicates hesitation among companies to adopt Industry 4.0 due to the ambiguity in the conceptual interpretation. The findings enable a more holistic understanding of the recent developments around Industry 4.0 and help to identify actions for the involved political, practical and academic actors. To actively shape the Industry 4.0 fashion development path, more institutional work is needed to help Industry 4.0 fashion users with their adoption engagements and hence achieve “professionalization” at an organizational level

Let’s Get Immersive: How Virtual Reality Can Encourage User Engagement in Process Modeling

Business process modeling plays a fundamental role in organizations that are restructuring their processes to meet the challenges of increasing digitalization and globalization. However, the geographic distribution of process stakeholders, the abstract non-contextual modeling languages, and the resulting low motivation to participate make process modeling difficult. In this paper, we present a design science research approach that resolves these problems using virtual reality. Based on empirical evidence, we first developed design principles to increase employee engagement. Subsequently, a virtual reality application was generated, that enables the placing of process models in realistic and immersive working environments. We developed the application continuously in four evaluation cycles and finally tested it in terms of usefulness in three field studies. The results of this study contribute to more context awareness in business process management and provide design knowledge for future industrial virtual reality applications

LET’S DO DESIGN THINKING VIRTUALLY: DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATION FOR COLLABORATIVE PROTOTYPING

Design Thinking (DT) is a widely used approach to develop human-centric solutions in organizational settings. One of the main activities within DT is prototyping, which allows for visualizing design ideas. However, the geographical distribution of teams and the lack of suitable working environments challenge these practices. This paper presents a design science research project that resolves these issues through virtual reality. Drawing on findings for creativity support, we derive meta-requirements and design principles and develop the DTinVR application that allows teams to visualize their ideas based on gestural interaction. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to enable collaborative prototyping using hand tracking. We confirm the effectiveness and positive usability of DTinVR by means of three evaluations and discuss how our design principles can help to develop immersive solutions. The findings of this study contribute to the design knowledge on immersive applications in the information systems discipline