Digital product innovation within four classes of innovation networks

The increased digitization of organizational processes and products poses new challenges for understanding product innovation. It also opens new horizons for information systems research. We analyse how ongoing pervasive digitization of product innovation reshapes knowledge creation and sharing in innovation networks. We argue that advances in digital technologies (1) increase innovation network connectivity by reducing communication costs and increasing its reach and scope and (2) increase the speed and scope of digital convergence, which increases network knowledge heterogeneity and need for integration. These developments, in turn, stretch existing innovation networks by redistributing control and increasing the demand for knowledge coordination across time and space presenting novel challenges for knowledge creation, assimilation and integration. Based on this foundation, we distinguish four types of emerging innovation networks supported by digitalization: (1) project innovation networks; (2) clan innovation networks; (3) federated innovation networks; and (4) anarchic innovation networks. Each network involves different cognitive and social translations – or ways of identifying, sharing and assimilating knowledge. We describe the role of five novel properties of digital infrastructures in supporting each type of innovation network: representational flexibility, semantic coherence, temporal and spatial traceability, knowledge brokering and linguistic calibration. We identify several implications for future innovation research. In particular, we focus on the emergence of anarchic network forms that follow full‐fledged digital convergence founded on richer innovation ontologies and epistemologies calling to critically re‐examine the nature and impact of modularization for innovation.     

Taxonomy of digital community currency platforms*

ABSTRACT

Community currencies are used to pay for products or services within specific groups defined by geographical boundaries or specific common interests. Financial crises, social emergence in developing countries, and increased access to digital devices have stimulated a growing number of communities worldwide to develop digital currency projects. These projects use technologies ranging from traditional plastic cards to mobile phones and blockchain technologies. Following the design science research approach, this paper analyzes digital community currencies (DCCs) by developing a taxonomy based on platform architecture, governance, transactionality and virtuality. By investigating 22 DCC platforms around the world, 4 groups were distinguished: local, proprietary, commons and cyber. The identification of these four different groups of digital community currencies allows us to better discuss the potentials and limitations of each one of them. The presented taxonomy can be useful to researchers and practitioners both to explain and to design DCC platforms. Discussing each of the emerging categories from the proposed taxonomy helps us to provide insights into DCCs, offering a new theoretical frame for investigating the particular case of digital payment platforms.     

Designing for work place learning

The use of computers to support learning at work has for long been propagated. Although a large bulk of experience exists in this field, it is still an open question what role computer applications play and can play in the process of learning. It can even be questioned if the learning processes themselves are sufficiently well understood to enable designers and others to provide relevant support. In this article these questions are addressed with reference to experience gained with two projects on computer support for shop floor learning. The projects involved the future users actively in the design process and it is argued that this involvement reached far beyond the mere shaping of the learning artefacts.     

Mixed reality environment for learning sensing technology applications in Construction: A usability study

Mixed reality is gradually becoming ubiquitous and significant in education owning to the inherent benefits of active participation and tacit knowledge development in a safe and engaging environment. However, limited studies have explored design features that facilitate its use as a pedagogical tool in construction education, particularly in equipping students with experiential skills that are otherwise challenging to obtain due to resource constraints and limited access to construction sites. By evaluating eye tracking, usability questions, and think-aloud protocol data and verbal feedback, this study investigated the usability of a mixed reality environment designed for equipping construction engineering students with competencies for deploying sensing technologies on construction projects. Results revealed features such as accuracy of represented construction activities, quality of animations, and easy access to information and resources as important for designing efficient mixed reality learning environments. While the usability data suggested that the user interface was usable, eye tracking provided profundity on encountered difficulties with the user interface. Through concise outline and sequential design of the user interface, this study revealed that knowledge scaffolding can improve task performance in a mixed reality learning environment. This study adds value to existing literature, in particular by providing insights into the affordances of mixed reality environments that address the technological gap between the construction industry and construction engineering education. The mixed reality learning environment contributes to the cognitive apprenticeship theory through the use of game objects to develop procedural knowledge for addressing construction industry challenges with sensing technologies.     

Enhancing design thinking in instructional technology students

There is growing demand in our society to cultivate creativity and foster innovation. Design thinking has been successfully practiced as an educational framework for supporting innovation in educational and work contexts. However, research on design thinking education that facilitates the acquisition of knowledge related to design process and practices is extremely limited, particularly in educational contexts. This pre-/posttest mixed methods study examined blogging as an instructional approach for supporting design thinking education in an online instructional technology course. An analysis of quantitative and qualitative data revealed an improvement in students’ design thinking skills after participating in the course. Students were more comfortable using design practices and processes than their creative abilities. Blogging about design thinking opened the potential for active knowledge construction about design thinking and reflection about personal design practices. However, it also hindered participation of students who were less comfortable with narrative meaning-making afforded through blogging or sharing their ideas on open networks such as blogs.     

Participatory heritage innovation: designing dialogic sites of engagement

Abstract

Innovations in digital cultural communication for museums challenge us to develop appropriate methods for participation in curatorial processes and to rethink the role of audiences inside exhibitions. The article explores the potentials of scaffolding sites of dialogue and creative engagement through the design process and final exhibition. It draws upon experiences from an interactive exhibition project, Digital Natives, in which we combined principles from Participatory Design with issues of contemporary digital culture to explore possibilities for creating heritage innovation. We suggest three critical stages of the dialogic design process in which engagement between stakeholders, researchers, and audiences can be central to shaping and transforming future conceptions of digital cultural heritage, through process and final exhibition. In this way, we argue that a participatory design anthropological approach to digital culture can expand opportunities for heritage innovation through technological means of engagement in museums.     

数字孪生小浪底知识库建设研究与实践

随着大数据、人工智能等新技术的飞速发展，信息技术在水利工程运行管理中正发挥越来越重要的支撑作用。数字孪生小浪底作为水利部数字孪生水利建设的首批试点工程，其知识库的建设是数字孪生小浪底的核心组成部分，技术难度大，业务场景应用面临着较大挑战。本文针对数字孪生小浪底知识库的建设进行了系统性的研究与实践，采用了知识引擎、知识库和知识应用三部分组成的知识库架构体系，实现了基于水利知识的检索、问答、推荐和推理决策等多样化服务，并在数字孪生“四预”业务应用中进行实践和验证，为小浪底枢纽的工程安全和防汛调度等核心业务提供了重要支撑。本文数字孪生小浪底知识库建设为类似水利工程具有参考价值和实践意义。     

A quantitative aesthetic measurement method for product appearance design

Product appearance is one of the crucial factors that influence consumers’ purchase decisions. The attractiveness of product appearance is mainly determined by the inherent aesthetics of the design composition related to the arrangement of visual design elements. Hence, it is critical to study and improve the arrangement of visual design elements for product appearance design. Strategies that apply aesthetic design principles to assist designers in effectively arranging visual design elements are widely acknowledged in both academia and industry. However, applying aesthetic design principles relies heavily on the designer’s perception and experience, while it is rather challenging for novice designers. Meanwhile, it is hard to measure and quantify design aesthetics in designing artefacts when designers refer to existing successful designs. In this regard, this study aims to introduce a method that assists designers in applying aesthetic design principles to improve the attractiveness of product appearance. Furthermore, formulas for aesthetic measurement based on aesthetic design principles are also developed, and it makes an early attempt to provide quantified aesthetic measurements of design artefacts. A case study on camera design was conducted to demonstrate the merits of the proposed method where the improved strategies for the camera appearance design offer insights for concept generation in product appearance design based on aesthetic design principles.     

Can we teach digital natives digital literacy?

In recent years, there has been much debate about the concept of digital natives, in particular the differences between the digital natives' knowledge and adoption of digital technologies in informal versus formal educational contexts. This paper investigates the knowledge about educational technologies of a group of undergraduate students studying the course Introduction to eLearning at a university in Australia and how they adopt unfamiliar technologies into their learning. The study explores the 'digital nativeness' of these students by investigating their degree of digital literacy and the ease with which they learn to make use of unfamiliar technologies. The findings show that the undergraduates were generally able to use unfamiliar technologies easily in their learning to create useful artefacts. They need, however to be made aware of what constitutes educational technologies and be provided with the opportunity to use them for meaningful purposes. The self-perception measures of the study indicated that digital natives can be taught digital literacy.     

The good enough revolution—the role of aesthetics in user experiences with digital artefacts

Technological development takes place at a rapid pace, and in recent years it has led to a growing output of artefacts and services with digital content, where availability and low price seem to be the main parameters for success. This trend has been labelled the ‘good enough’ revolution and has highlighted contemporary parameters for technological development. The present article presents this trend as a design movement that is characterised by introducing a new functionalism and challenging common perceptions that have emerged as a result of the twentieth-century design story about ‘high quality’ and ‘added value’ in product development. In addition, the article introduces the concept of aesthetics as the basis for a discussion about user experiences in contemporary digital artefacts, and argues that the good enough movement calls for a new understanding of aesthetics that springs from the role of digital artefacts in the user's social life and plays a role in relation to technologically oriented design development.     

A Speech Act Theory-based information model to support design communication through annotations

The aim of this paper is to describe an annotation model based around design representations. The model tends to promote more successful co-operation between design actors and enables more systematic knowledge sharing. Our annotation model is a set of digital artefacts, which have a semantic dimension. These artefacts aim to improve the design communication through the elicitation of knowledge about the context. We develop a linguistics pragmatics approach, based on Speech Act Theory to characterise annotations in design co-operation. By following the utterance and illocutionary force concepts, we develop locutionary and illocutionary annotation acts concepts. Then, we present an information model on the basis of these concepts. Finally, we propose functionalities for an annotation tool based on our approach.     

What can Studies of e-Learning Teach us about Collaboration in e-Research? Some Findings from Digital Library Studies

e-Research is intended to facilitate collaboration through distributed access to content, tools, and services. Lessons about collaboration are extracted from the findings of two large, long-term digital library research projects. Both the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype Project (ADEPT) and the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) project on data management leverage scientific research data for use in teaching. Two forms of collaboration were studied: (1) direct, in which faculty work together on research projects; and (2) indirect or serial, in which faculty use or contribute content to a common pool, such as teaching resources, concepts and relationships, or research data. Five aspects of collaboration in e-Research are discussed: (1) disciplinary factors, (2) incentives to adopt e-Learning and e-Research technologies, (3) user roles, (4) information sharing, and (5) technical requirements. Collaboration varied by research domain in both projects, and appears partly to be a function of the degree of instrumentation in data collection. Faculty members were more interested in tools to manage their own research data than in tools to facilitate teaching. They also were more reflective about their research than teaching activities. The availability of more content, tools, and services to incorporate primary data in teaching was only a minimal incentive to use these resources. Large investments in a knowledge base of scientific concepts and relationships for teaching did not result in re-use by other faculty during the course of the project. Metadata requirements for research and for teaching vary greatly, which further complicates the transfer of resources across applications. Personal digital libraries offer a middle ground between private control and public release of content, which is a promising direction for the design of digital libraries that will facilitate collaboration in e-Research.     

Designing mobile technologies to support co-present collaboration

Mobile technologies offer new opportunities for childrens educational activities in that they can be used across different locations and times. Naturally, some instances of mobile technology use will necessitate, or be enhanced by, the sharing of information. Social interaction is important for sharing ideas, constructing and shaping understanding and fundamental for educational development. However the physical size of mobile technologies presents interesting challenges when designing for collaborative activities. When designing mobile technologies the importance of collaborative tasks has often been overlooked. The replacement of low-tech artefacts with digital devices, for supporting multiple users, can inhibit the shareability of information. We present three projects where mobile technologies have been used as part of a larger mixed reality experience. Novel technologies were used to support childrens collaborative activities in storytelling, an adventure game and during an outdoor field trip. Interaction with mobile devices within each project is reviewed and the authors highlight important considerations for their design and use across multiple contexts.     

Customer requirement-driven design method and computer-aided design system for supporting service innovation conceptualization handling

How to create value to meet customers’ requirements by effectively using advanced digital technology (DT) for digital transformation is an implementation challenge for new and future scenarios of current contexts. Valid digital transformation issues need to be considered to deliver novel values with sustainability concerns. Attempting to effectively achieve a successful service system design in an industrial context, a holistic customer requirement-driven service design method with abductive logic was proposed to drive self-service productivity enhancement. Laddering theory, ontology-based design knowledge hierarchy (DKH), theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and quality function deployment (QFD) technique are adopted in terms of effective design knowledge handling in innovation conceptualization with a traceable path and abductive logic linking from customer concerns, business context and technology digitization. Then, a comprehensive case study of an empirical smart meal-ordering service system for the digital transformation of canteen processes was illustrated to verify this approach.     

Future technology workshop: A collaborative method for the design of new learning technologies and activities

We describe the future technology workshop (FTW), a method whereby people with everyday knowledge or experience in a specific area of technology use (such as using digital cameras) envision and design the interactions between current and future technology and activity. Through a series of structured workshop sessions, participants collaborate to envisage future activities related to technology design; build models of the contexts of use for future technologies; act out scenarios of use for their models; re-conceive their scenarios in relation to present-day technologies; list problems with implementing the scenarios; explore the gap between current and future technology and activity; and end by listing requirements for future technology. The method has been used successfully with children and adults to explore new technology–activity systems, including interacting with digital photographs and informal science learning.     

位置服务系统研究与实现

我国移动GIS的发展,现阶段应用核心仍然是位置服务——LBS（Location Based Service）,LBS系统建设提供了未来空间信息服务蓝图,对我国数字城市建设有着重要意义。本文以上海市科技发展基金项目＂空间信息移动用户应用服务系统——GIS核心处理模块＂和上海市信息委653工程项目＂移动GIS技术创新与软件开发＂为支撑,深入研究LBS系统设计与实现技术,包括GIS理论与技术、Java ME技术平台、Mobile SVG规范、XML规范等;设计并实现基于Java ME的LBS系统。     

Tapping into the wealth of employees’ ideas: Design principles for a digital intrapreneurship platform

Digital transformation offers organizations opportunities to involve intrapreneurs, i.e., employees sharing the zeal of entrepreneurs, but innovating within organizational boundaries through the generation of new ideas. Despite organizations’ interest in exploiting their employees’ innovation potential, tools as digital intrapreneurship platforms guiding and hosting this innovation process are limited and their design is challenging. Thus, we provide the results of an action design research project with an IT service provider and describe the iterative design process. The designed intrapreneurship platform is ingrained in the socio-technical system theory. Its evaluation derives design principles, guiding organizations to design viable platforms facilitating intrapreneurial behavior.     

The direction of future development and the role of knowledge in manufacturing technology

The directions of technological innovation and possible future development of the manufacturing technologies are examined, taking into consideration the environments surrounding the manufacturing technologies. The subjects for development in future manufacturing technologies are discussed, and in particular, the roles of artificial intelligence and knowledge engineering are examined in detail. Applications of knowledge engineering to actual problems in manufacturing are introduced, including application of knowledge engineering to the representation and understanding of the specifications in the design stage, knowledge-based process planning, and high intelligence FMS. A new concept called EA (enterprise automation) is also proposed, which deals with the integrated software system of the entire enterprise.     

Persuasive social features that promote knowledge sharing among tertiary students on social networking sites: An empirical study

Persuasive system features have been widely adopted to encourage attitude and behaviour change. Recently, most social networking sites (SNS) adopt some form of persuasive system features that leverage social influence to deliberately induce prescribed behaviours in their users. However, studies on how these features can be used to promote knowledge sharing are inadequate; particularly, regarding how SNS that have been developed solely for academic purposes can adopt these features to promote knowledge sharing. To address this knowledge gap, this study integrates constructs from the social capital theory and persuasive systems design model to investigate the impact of persuasive social features on knowledge sharing among students of tertiary institutions on academic social networking sites. Data are quantitatively gathered from 218 respondents from tertiary institutions and statistically analyzed. The results suggest that perceived dialogue support and perceived social support have strong influences on knowledge sharing behaviour.     

Exploring design trade-offs for achieving social inclusion in multi-tiered design problems

ABSTRACT

The digital age of the future is ‘not out there to be discovered’, but it needs to be ‘designed’. The design challenge has to address questions about how we want to live, work, and learn (as individuals and as communities) and what we value and appreciate, e.g.: reflecting on quality of life and creating inclusive societies. An overriding design trade-off for the digital age is whether new developments will increase the digital divide or will create more inclusive societies. Sustaining inclusive societies means allowing people of all ages and all abilities to exploit information technologies for personally meaningful activities. Meta-design fosters the design of socio-technical environments that end-user developers can modify and evolve at use time to improve their quality of life and favour their inclusion in the society. This paper describes three case studies in the domain of assistive technologies in which end users themselves cannot act as end-user developers, but someone else (e.g.: a caregiver or a clinician) must accept this role requiring multi-tiered architectures. The design trade-offs and requirements for meta-design identified in the context of the case studies and other researchers’ projects are described to inform the development of future socio-technical environments focused on social inclusion.