Public transportation is an environment with great potential for applying innovative ubiquitous computing services to enhance user experiences. This paper provides the underpinning rationale for... Show More

Public transportation is an environment with great potential for applying innovative ubiquitous computing services to enhance user experiences. This paper provides the underpinning rationale for research that will be looking at how real-time passenger information system deployed by transit authorities can provide a core platform to improve commuters’ user experiences during all stages of their journey. The proposal builds on this platform to inform the design and development of innovative social media, mobile computing and geospatial information applications, with the hope to create fun and meaningful experiences for passengers during their everyday travel. Furthermore, we present the findings of our pilot study that aims to offer a better understanding of passengers’ activities and social interactions during their daily commute.

The philosophy of information is the area of research that studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information technology and philosophy. Universal design is a... Show More

The philosophy of information is the area of research that studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information technology and philosophy. Universal design is a concept that emphasizes the importance of non-specialized features in things and environments. As ambient media is becoming more intelligent and the users are already across a larger part of the population, the path towards achieving universal design and change of attitude in the authors’ minds is clear but requires that they think globally and frame the issues a little differently. This article aims to see universal design concept; its principles, uses, design processes, from a philosophical perspective in terms of ambient media design. Principles for designing intelligent user interface are derived from the universal design principles and a framework is proposed. The framework is then verified to see how optimally these intelligent user interface design principles can work to enhance ambient media experience. The paper concludes by arguing that the concept of universal design for ambient media development is not a style but an attitude of accepting the difference and responsibility of ours by proposing what needs to be done further for upholding the universal design concept of ambient media design.

Software mashups that combine content from multiple web sites to an integrated experience are a popular trend. However, methods, tools and architectures for creating mashups are still rather... Show More

Software mashups that combine content from multiple web sites to an integrated experience are a popular trend. However, methods, tools and architectures for creating mashups are still rather undeveloped, and there is little engineering support behind them. In this paper the authors present guidelines that can serve as a helpful starting point for the design of new mashups. Guidelines focus mainly on mashup creation methods. Furthermore, they describe a reference architecture for client-side mashup development. In addition, the authors provide insight into mashup development based on their practical experiences in implementing various sample client-side mashup applications and tools for creating them. The long term goal of the authors’ work is to facilitate the development of compelling, robust and maintainable mashup applications, and more generally ease the transition towards web-based software development.

The use, potential and challenges of social media in innovation have received little attention in the literature, especially from the standpoint of the business-to-business sector. Therefore, this... Show More

The use, potential and challenges of social media in innovation have received little attention in the literature, especially from the standpoint of the business-to-business sector. Therefore, this paper focuses on bridging this gap. The purpose of this paper is to study the use and potential of social media in the innovation context, especially from the perspective of business-to-business companies. The paper starts by defining of social media and Web 2.0, and then characterizes social media in business, social media in the business-to-business sector and social media in the business-to-business innovation process. The paper also studies the essential differences between business-to-consumer and business-to-business in the given respects. Finally the authors present and analyze the results of their empirical survey of 110 respondents from Finnish companies. The results suggest that there is a significant gap between the perceived extensive potential of social media and current social media use in innovation in business-to-business companies. They have also identified potentially effective ways to reduce the gap, and clarify the found differences between B2B’s and B2C’s.