Form and function - designing successful mobile data services - Survey Data

Mobile devices, along with mobile data services (MDS), have become powerful attendants in our daily life. Starting with simple communication services, MDS now offer a solution for almost every demand in private and business life. The market for MDS has become very competitive and is creating pressure on MDS providers with continuously increasing consumer demands. Recently, design has received much attention, since it provides vast opportunities for differentiating offerings and gaining competitive advantage. However, there is often semantic confusion when it comes to the concrete application of design. Based on the theoretical integration of user satisfaction and technology acceptance of Wixom and Todd (2005) and by conceptualizing form and function as the two major components of design, we propose a theoretical model that specifically investigates which MDS design characteristics influence consumers’ perception and behavioral intention. We empirically tested our model with partial least square (PLS) analysis, based on a sample of 2,295 responses from MDS users in the mobile banking context. The findings reveal that both components of design – form and function – were positively associated with satisfaction. The relationship between form and satisfaction was moderated by MDS consumer age and MDS usage frequency

The role of design for software success : an examination of design outcome and process

Design, in terms of beauty, has always influenced mankind. With the beginning of the postmodern aestheticization movement in the last decades of the 20th century, design came into the center of attention in society and business. While being restricted to traditional industries like manufacturing in early days, design has nowadays also entered fields of intangible products, like the software in-dustry. Numerous software companies have discovered design as a new instrument for gaining competitive advantage and for increasing the perceived customer value of their offerings. With di-verse activities, they try to strengthen the focus on design within the organization and the offerings. Thereby, software companies have to tackle additional challenges in contrast to manufacturing companies since software, as intangible good, has some specific characteristics which makes it unique compared to physical goods. The intangible nature of software changes consumers’ percep-tion of design and triggers substantial challenges concerning the design outcome. In addition, its intangible nature makes reproduction and transportation virtually free and fast, changes can be im-plemented easily and at any time. This leads to an intensive competition among software companies and the need for efficiency of their development processes, in order to stay competitive. Due to the specific characteristics, existing research results from traditional product development cannot be directly transferred to the context of software. These challenges are addressed in the present work by means of two empirical studies. In a first step a clear conceptualization of design in the context of software is developed and corresponding design outcome is investigated in a large scale quantitative study in the context of mobile banking services. In a second step a hybrid qualitative and quantitative research approach systematically investigates the conditions of software development success concerning the interaction between the functional areas of business and design, i.e. product managers and product designers. The results of the first study provide key insights into the effects of form and function on user satis-faction and ultimately behavioral intention of mobile banking service consumers. In addition, a set of important moderators is revealed, such as usage frequency. The second study identifies success factors for the interaction of product managers and product designers and provides empirical evi-dence for a positive relationship between the identified factors and the success of software devel-opment. The results of the work provide key insights for both the design outcome and the design process from which finally implications for a successful application of design in the context of software are derived

Cross-Functional Integration of Product Management and Product Design in Application Software Development: Exploration of Success Factors - Survey Data

The industrialization of application software development is a key trend in the software industry. One important element of industrialized development processes is the introduction of a division of work with specialized competencies. Cross-functional integration is a fundamental and well established concept in product development. Its potential has also been recognized in application software development. Many enterprise application software vendors have established product management to complement software development from a business perspective, while R&D primarily focuses on technology aspects. Due to the growing significance of usability and user experience, the product design function has become increasingly important for application software development. However, there is little empirical work concerning cross-functional integration of product management and product design in application software development. The work presented in this paper explores success factors of this cross-functional integration

Cross-Functional Integration of Product Management and Product Design in Application Software Development: Exploration of Success Factors

The industrialization of application software development is a key trend in the software industry. One important element of industrialized development processes is the introduction of a division of work with specialized competencies. Cross-functional integration is a fundamental and well established concept in product development. Its potential has also been recognized in application software development. Many enterprise application software vendors have established product management to complement software development from a business perspective, while R&D primarily focuses on technology aspects. Due to the growing significance of usability and user experience, the product design function has become increasingly important for application software development. However, there is little empirical work concerning cross-functional integration of product management and product design in application software development. The work presented in this paper explores success factors of this cross-functional integration

AskEris - A Many-to-One Communication Platform for Higher Education

In recent years much research has been conducted examining the opportunities of using modern Web 2.0 applications in teaching. Today, wikis, forums, pod casts or classical email communication are widely used media through which students can get in touch with their instructors or can discuss certain topics with each other. However, the usage of so-called many-to one communication, where a number of persons transmit their messages to one recipient, has been considered only rarely. In this paper, we present Asker is -- an innovative many-to-one communication platform for higher education. It bases on previous investigations regarding various communication forms and their use in higher education. In this article, we describe its development and benefits. Finally, we provide insights into the evaluation of Asker is. Due to the positive results of this evaluation, Asker is was forwarded to the internal university computer center, which integrated Asker is into the university-wide document and communication platform

Developing a Domain Ontology for Software Product Management

Software product management has gained much attention in recent years for its positive influence on corporate success in software companies. However, despite its relevance and positive influence there is only little and vague guidance concerning software product management. There is no extensive body of knowledge as in Software Engineering or Project Management. The work presented in this paper aims at developing an adequate and precise conceptual representation of the software product management domain by means of creating a domain ontology. It defines domain-specific knowledge on a more fundamental level. The developed ontology captures basic aspects of the software product management domain and represents a reasonable approach to provide a common conceptual understanding of the domain