How Do Designers Deal With Uncertainty

Uncertainty touches most aspects of life and cannot be avoided, anybody is frequently presented with situations wherein a decision must be made when he/she is uncertain of exactly how to proceed. Narrow down into Information Systems (IS) field, uncertainty could be regarded as a basic but difficult problem that every HCI designer need to deal with within their design process. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how do human-computer interaction (HCI) practitioners deal with the uncertainty in their daily work. Based on this purpose, we assume that design approaches could be the methods for the designers to deal with uncertainty. There is however very few existing research on how to deal with uncertainty. In this study, we firstly categorized the uncertainty into a logical taxonomy, also ranked four design approaches by the extent of user involvement. We interviewed five HCI practitioners in different organizations that are or were working as designers. We found that most uncertainties are resulted from their customers, which can also be the most difficult to handle by them. In order to solve uncertainty, the designers need to make a good communication with others in specific situation, and some of them also proposed other practical solutions, such as “Role Play” and “Instinct Follower”. Additionally, the designers all proposed that the relationship between uncertainty and design approaches can be weak or inexistent. Interestingly, modest user involvement can be a helper for designers to solve or avoid uncertainty in the design process

Exploring doctors' willingness to provide online counseling services : the roles of motivations and costs

With the impetus of information communication technology (ICT), emerging eHealth has attracted increasing number of doctors’ participation in online health platforms, which provide various potential benefits to doctors. However, previous studies on eHealth have seldom distinguished different service modes provided by doctors. In addition, the bulk of the literature has considered doctors’ motivations based solely on online environments. To fill this gap, this study combines expectancy theory and the Bagozzi, Dholakia, and Basuroy (BDB) model to examine the relationships between anticipated outcomes, performance expectations, and effort intentions from online and offline perspectives. Doctors’ behavioral intentions are further divided into two categories: the willingness to offer free services and paid services. Using SmartPLS, this study conducts structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze 311 sample data. The results show that extrinsic motivations (i.e., extrinsic rewards, expected relationships, and image) and intrinsic motivation (i.e., a sense of self-worth) significantly influence the desire to serve patients well, which in turn positively affects the willingness to offer free services and the willingness to offer paid services. Moreover, counseling time is confirmed as the main cost, which negatively moderates the relationships between desire and behavioral intentions. The findings provide theoretical insights for eHealth and provide practical suggestions to develop marketing strategies for online health platform providers

An Empirical Study of Hotel Online Booking in O to O Commerce

Many studies have postulated the reasons for the development of the O2O business though the research of the customers’ behavioral intention is relatively unexplored. This study selects the travel industry as the research context to investigate online-offline integration between hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs). To investigate customers’ behavioral intention, this study establishes an integrated model of information systems success model and customer loyalty. The research focuses on whether customer loyalty (e.g., satisfaction and trust) can increase the booking intention, and the factors of increasing satisfaction and trust. According to the analyzed results, satisfaction directly influences customers’ booking intention while trust directly and indirectly influences customer booking intention through satisfaction. For antecedents, system quality and service quality have a significant impact on satisfaction, while brand image and size have a significant impact on trust. These findings have implications for OTAs to attract customers to book hotels through their websites

The determinants of CEO compensation in non-profit organizations: the case of UK charities

UK charities constitute an important part of the UK economy and have a positive effect on supporting vulnerable groups. This paper examines the determinants of CEO compensation in the UK non-profit organizations, focuses on the factors that affect CEO compensation on the board, organization, and CEO individual level. Specifically, it is supported by several theoretical perspectives including agency theory, stewardship theory, stakeholder theory, and resources dependency theory. In this context, the sample includes the 160 largest charities in the UK and the data is manually collected from the Charity Commission and the annual reports. To investigate the relationship between CEO compensation and different variables, fixed effect regression is adopted. The result indicates that CEO characteristics affect the CEO compensation most, CEOs with more experience and higher qualifications are considered to be paid more. Besides, the gender pay gap exists in NPOs, the number of male CEOs account for a large proportion, and their compensation is relatively higher than female CEOs. On the board level, the establishment of remuneration or nomination committee is negatively associated with CEO compensation, other board characteristics are regarded insignificant suggest that CEOs in NPOs are altruistic and driven by intrinsic motivation, meanwhile, the traditional agency theory is not proper to adopt in NPOs. Lastly, this paper provides implications for academia and the development of the non-profit sector, hoping to contribute to the regulation, governance practice of the CEO compensation in the non-profit sector