Nasrine Olson, Jan Michael Nolin and Gustaf Nelhans
The purpose of this paper is to investigate concepts that are used in depicting future visions of society, as afforded by technology, to map the extent of their use, examine the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate concepts that are used in depicting future visions of society, as afforded by technology, to map the extent of their use, examine the level of their dominance in different research areas and geographic boundaries, identify potential overlaps, analyse their longitudinal growth, and examine whether any of the identified concepts has assumed an overarching position.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 14 concepts, each of which is used to depict visions of future information infrastructures, were identified. More than 20,000 scholarly documents related to 11 of these concepts (those with 20 or more documents) are analysed by various qualitative/quantitative methods.
Findings
The concepts most referred to are semantic web and ubiquitous computing (all years), and internet of things (Year 2013). Publications on some newer concepts (e.g. digital living, real world internet) are minimal. There are variations in the extent of use and preferred concepts based on geographic and disciplinary boundaries. The overlap in the use of these terms is minimal and none of these terms has assumed an overarching umbrella position.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to scholarly publications; it would be relevant to also study the pattern of usage in governmental communications and policy documents.
Social implications
By mapping multiplicity of concepts and the dispersion of discussions, the authors highlight the need for, and facilitate, a broader discussion of related social and societal implications.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to present a collective of these related concepts and map the pattern of their occurrence and growth.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore and engage with connections between the evolving technology of the Internet of Things (IoT) and notions of convenience. In particular, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore and engage with connections between the evolving technology of the Internet of Things (IoT) and notions of convenience. In particular, the concept of alpha convenience is introduced in order to articulate the broad scope of Internet “any-everything” connectivity, here called “alpha convenience.”
Design/methodology/approach
The recommendations of Constructive Technology Assessment are followed in order to evaluate technology before implementation. The seven value drivers articulated by Fleisch (2010) are utilized in order to envision-specific aspects.
Findings
Three critical aspects relating to alpha convenience are identified and discussed: gossiping technology, personalization and the disempowered smartphone user. It is argued that extreme forms of convenience shift traditional areas of human agency onto technology. It is also noted that alpha convenience tends to develop as ubiquitous feature of future society, making it difficult, if not impossible, to opt out.
Research limitations/implications
The paper focusses on one powerful concept, although the IoT is merely one of several terms used to deliberate the role of next-generation information technology and society. Notable competitors include semantic web, ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing and ambient intelligence.
Social implications
The IoT is predicted to be an intrusive feature into everyday life and the paper identifies important aspects.
Originality/value
This is the first critical discussion of the IoT and convenience. The paper aims at conceptual innovation. Overall, there is a substantial lack of critical scrutiny of the emerging ideas of the IoT.
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Mingzhi Dong, Fabio Santagata, Robert Sokolovskij, Jia Wei, Cadmus Yuan and Guoqi Zhang
This study aims to provide a flexible and cost-effective solution of 3D heterogeneous integration for applications such as micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) applications and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to provide a flexible and cost-effective solution of 3D heterogeneous integration for applications such as micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) applications and smart sensor systems.
Design/methodology/approach
A novel 3D system-in-package (SiP) based on stacked silicon submount technology was successfully developed and well-demonstrated by the fabrication and assembly process of a selected smart lighting module.
Findings
The stacked module consists of multiple layers of silicon submounts which can be designed and fabricated in parallel. The bonding and interconnecting process is quite simple and does not require complicated equipment. The 3D stacking design offers higher silicon efficiency and miniaturized package form factor. The submount wafer can be assembled and tested at the wafer level, thus reducing the cost and improving the yield.
Research limitations/implications
The embedding design presented in this paper is applicable for modules with limited number of passives. When it comes to cases with more passive devices, new process needs to be developed to achieve fast, inexpensive and reliable assembly.
Originality/value
The presented 3D SiP design is novel for applications such as smart lighting, Internet of Things, MEMS systems, etc.
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Shantanu Shantaram Apte, Abhijit Vasant Chirputkar and Abhijeet Lele
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is a widely practiced employee appraisal process in the services industry. In a global delivery model, teams are spread across different…
Abstract
Purpose
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is a widely practiced employee appraisal process in the services industry. In a global delivery model, teams are spread across different geographical locations. The team members work on various tasks under the guidance of different managers and at times under more than one manager for performing the same task. Such complexities make RPE of the team members quite challenging. The paper proposes a methodical step-by-step approach to simplify the evaluation process without compromising on the rigour.
Design/methodology/approach
RPE has followed three different approaches. First is the traditional way, wherein evaluators had a common meeting to discuss and arrive at relative evaluation and ranking of members of the peer group employees. In the second, the number of evaluators and employees in a peer group were split in to 2 subgroups. The evaluators provided independent ratings and rankings. Simple mathematical tool then derived the combined ranking. In the third approach, each evaluator evaluated each employee in the peer group and provided the relative ranking for each employee. Again, mathematical tools provided the final ranking considering inputs from all evaluators. All the three evaluation approaches were analysed through an inter-rater agreement method.
Findings
All the three approaches for evaluation provided similar results giving confidence that less time-consuming methods could be adopted by evaluators without compromising on the rigour of the evaluation. The outcome of the exercise proved effective as the complaints reaching the ombudsmen reduced as compared to the earlier years. Considerable evaluation time was also saved. The study described in this paper is carried out in a non-unionized, Indian private sector services firm. Its effectiveness in other set ups is yet to be tested.
Research limitations/implications
The research is carried out in the Indian Engineering services firm operating in the Knowledge based sector. Though study results are encouraging, the adaptability of methodology across different sectors and geographies is yet to be tested. More broad based studies are needed to evaluate suitability across firms and regions.
Practical implications
Relative evaluation exercise is challenging for evaluators. Although openness in evaluation is desired, it also makes evaluators uncomfortable in appearing to be taking sides or being opposing a candidate's ranking. The proposed approach brings in anonymity to each evaluator without scarifying individual evaluation.
Social implications
The proposed methodology can be deployed across different services industries as the proposed methodology is business domain agnostic. It can be easily ported and tailored to align with an individual organization's evaluation philosophy. The suitability and effectiveness of the method can be studied under various types of firms like manufacturing, private, public, NGO, labour oriented, etc. As the proposed method reduces efforts, the stake holders can focus on understanding the relation between employee performance measurement, employee engagement, and long-term outcomes related to employee performance evaluation.
Originality/value
The proposed employee evaluation method leverages inter-rater reliability and agreement tool as a consensus approach to the relative performance ranking exercise. Such an approach to relative performance ranking is original as no prior studies with such an approach are found in the existing Literature.
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Manning Li, Patrick Y.K. Chau and Lin Ge
Inspired by the dynamic changes in our daily lives enabled via quantified-self technologies and the urgent need for more studies on the human-computer interaction design…
Abstract
Purpose
Inspired by the dynamic changes in our daily lives enabled via quantified-self technologies and the urgent need for more studies on the human-computer interaction design mechanisms adopted by these applications, this study explores the value of user affective experience mirroring and examines the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification in a psychological self-help system (PSS) that aids people in work stress relief.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an analysis of the existing systems and theories in relevant fields, we conducted mixed-method research, involving semi-structured interviews, experience sampling experiments and user bio data triangulations, to identify the benefits of user affective experience mirroring and examine the impact of visual impact metaphor–based (VIM) meaningful gamification on PSS users.
Findings
For a gamified PSS, users generally perceive VIM as arousing more feelings of enjoyment, empathy, trust and usefulness, empowering them to gain more mastery and control over their emotional well-beings, especially with relieving their occupational stress and upbringing their level of perceived happiness. Overtime, VIM-based meaningful gamification further boosts such value of a PSS.
Research limitations/implications
Weaving together meaningful gamification and psychological empowerment theories, the results emphasized that successful empowerment of user through gamification in PSSs relies heavily on whether a deeper and meaningful affective connection can be established with the users, in short, “meaningful gamification for psychological empowerment”. Such an understanding, as demonstrated in our research framework, also sheds light on the design theories for persuasive technology and human influence tactics during human computer interactions.
Practical implications
The results of the study demonstrate to practitioners how to make the best use of gamification strategies to deeply relate to and resonate with users. Even without complicated game-play design, meaningful gamification mechanisms, such as VIM facilitate the empowerment of users while gaining their appreciation, establishing a deeper connection with them and eventually generating persuasive effects on intended future behavioural outcomes.
Social implications
The effective management of work-related stress with handy tools such as a VIM-based PSS can be beneficial for many organizations and, to a large extent, the society.
Originality/value
This study proposed and empirically demonstrated the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification for PSS users. In this cross-disciplinary study, theories from different research domains were synthesized to develop a more thorough and multi-faceted understanding of the optimal design strategies for emerging information systems like this VIM-based PSS.
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Mathieu Brévilliers, Julien Lepagnot, Lhassane Idoumghar, Maher Rebai and Julien Kritter
This paper aims to investigate to what extent hybrid differential evolution (DE) algorithms can be successful in solving the optimal camera placement problem.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate to what extent hybrid differential evolution (DE) algorithms can be successful in solving the optimal camera placement problem.
Design/methodology/approach
This problem is stated as a unicost set covering problem (USCP) and 18 problem instances are defined according to practical operational needs. Three methods are selected from the literature to solve these instances: a CPLEX solver, greedy algorithm and row weighting local search (RWLS). Then, it is proposed to hybridize these algorithms with two hybrid DE approaches designed for combinatorial optimization problems. The first one is a set-based approach (DEset) from the literature. The second one is a new similarity-based approach (DEsim) that takes advantage of the geometric characteristics of a camera to find better solutions.
Findings
The experimental study highlights that RWLS and DEsim-CPLEX are the best proposed algorithms. Both easily outperform CPLEX, and it turns out that RWLS performs better on one class of problem instances, whereas DEsim-CPLEX performs better on another class, depending on the minimal resolution needed in practice.
Originality/value
Up to now, the efficiency of RWLS and the DEset approach has been investigated only for a few problems. Thus, the first contribution is to apply these methods for the first time in the context of camera placement. Moreover, new hybrid DE algorithms are proposed to solve the optimal camera placement problem when stated as a USCP. The second main contribution is the design of the DEsim approach that uses the distance between camera locations to fully benefit from the DE mutation scheme.
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Qingxiao Yu, Can Yuan, Z. Fu and Yanzheng Zhao
Recently, service robots have been widely used in various fields. The purpose of this paper is to design a restaurant service robot which could be applicable to provide basic…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, service robots have been widely used in various fields. The purpose of this paper is to design a restaurant service robot which could be applicable to provide basic service, such as ordering, fetching and sending food, settlement and so on, for the customers in the robot restaurant.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on characteristics of wheeled mobile robots, the service robot with two manipulators is designed. Constrained by the DOF, the final positioning accuracy within ±3 cm must be guaranteed to successfully grasp the plate. Segmented positioning method is applied considering the positioning costs and accuracy requirement in the different stages, and the shape‐based matching tracking method is adopted to navigate the robot to the object.
Findings
Experiments indicate that the service robot could successfully grasp the plate, from wherever is its initial position; and the proposed algorithms could estimate the robot pose well and accurately evaluate the localization performance.
Research limitations/implications
At present, the service robot could only work in an indoor environment where there is steady illumination.
Practical implications
The service robot is applicable to provide basic service for the customers in the robot restaurant.
Originality/value
The paper gives us a concept of a restaurant service robot and its localization and navigation algorithms. The service robot could provide its real‐time coordinates and arrive at the object with ±2 cm positioning precision, from wherever is its initial position.
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Tai-Chia Huang, Chia-Hsuan Hsieh and Hei-Chia Wang
Producing meeting documents requires an instantaneous recorder during meetings, which costs extra human resources and takes time to amend the file. However, a high-quality meeting…
Abstract
Purpose
Producing meeting documents requires an instantaneous recorder during meetings, which costs extra human resources and takes time to amend the file. However, a high-quality meeting document can enable users to recall the meeting content efficiently. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
An application based on this framework is developed to help the users find topics and obtain summarizations of meeting contents without extra effort. This app uses the Bluemix speech recognizer to obtain speech transcripts. It then combines latent Dirichlet allocation and a TextTiling algorithm with the speech script of meetings to detect boundaries between different topics and evaluate the topics in each segment. TextTeaser, an open API based on a feature-based approach, is then used to summarize the speech transcripts.
Findings
The results indicate that the summaries generated by the machine are 85 percent similar to the records written by humankind.
Originality/value
To reduce the human effort in generating meeting reports, this paper presents a framework to record and analyze meeting contents automatically by voice recognition, topic detection, and extractive summarization.
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Xuebing Dong, Yaping Chang, Shichang Liang and Xiaojun Fan
The purpose of this paper is to examine the synergistic effects of online multimedia by categorizing it into online broadcast media (OBM) and online interactive media (OIM).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the synergistic effects of online multimedia by categorizing it into online broadcast media (OBM) and online interactive media (OIM).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used an online experiment method to manipulate the online message stimuli level (online media synergy and online single media repetition).
Findings
The results revealed that participants exposed to message stimuli of online media synergy reported greater source credibility, cognitive responses (brand credibility and positive thoughts about the brand), attitude toward the brand and purchase intention. In online multimedia, source credibility influences attitude toward the brand through brand credibility and positive thoughts about the brand; in online single media repetition, source credibility influences attitude toward the brand through only brand credibility.
Research limitations/implications
In addition, the relationship between online media synergy and marketing outcomes might be moderated by consumers’ goals and thought patterns, and future research could further explore the moderating effects of these variables.
Practical implications
This study contributes to media synergy research, assists marketing planners in their understanding of the importance of online media synergy and serves as a reference for marketing planners considering an integrated online marketing plan.
Originality/value
The current study investigated how the synergy of OBM and OIM influences message persuasiveness for consumers (cognitive responses, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention).