ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is currently a global pandemic with worldwide magnitude and transversal implications. In Sri Lanka, during several island-wide curfews imposed since March 2020 and up to now, the agriculture industry's stakeholders and consumers have been coming across several challenges such as food scarcity, dramatic price fluctuations of commodities, and difficulties in searching of market for both product buying and selling. Also, communities have faced challenges related to the timely purchase of planting materials and other agro-inputs (fertilizers and pesticides), loss of income, inadequacy of reliable advices and directions, and market uncertainties, which have demoralized them with no clear way forward. This blockage created a sudden imbalance of the entire value chain of agriculture industry affecting almost all stakeholders. Electronic representation of physical entities-such as local fairs and mega trading hubs driven by computer intelligence services-are believed in this study to be viable solutions to overcome most of the above-mentioned challenges. Therefore, this study proposes a smart-agriculture support system naming it as Electronic Partner for Agro Services (EPAS), which would seamlessly connect farmers, consumers, and other relevant stakeholders of the agriculture value chain in the virtual space electronically. The system intends to regulate price for goods and services while organizing a balanced supply and demand in more informative and intelligent manner, thus provisioning electronic financial accounting facilities for subscribers. Timely dissemination of knowledge, advice, financial services and linking agro-input suppliers are also embedded into the proposed model. The Design Science Research (DSR) Methodology was adopted in this study in developing the EPAS conceptual model. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Technology solutions to mitigate repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic include tools that provide guidelines and interfaces to guide behavior, reduce exposure to the disease, and enable policy-driven avenues to return to a sense of normalcy (e.g., work and school). This paper takes a design science approach to present the justification, design, development, and early assessment of a return-to-work COVID-19 symptom checker and risk assessor. The system was implemented across 34 institutions of health and education in the US State of Alabama, including over 174k users with >4 million total uses and >86k reports of exposure risk between July 2020 and April 2021. Users complied with use policies between 60-74% of the time, with k-12 schools showing higher compliance than colleges and universities. Using system use data and focus group discussions, findings indicate the system was generally accepted, used regularly, facilitated reduction of disease exposure, and enabled a path back to work and school. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The deployment of mobile health (mHealth) apps can transform healthcare in rural and remote communities worldwide. Rural communities in Zimbabwe have limited access to information that affects their health, economic and social being due to structural and social barriers related to the inaccessibility of traditional media. mhealth apps are a valuable tool to monitor disease outbreaks and provide preventative information to the public. Lack of access to COVID-19 information results in high fatalities and public panic, and it is critical to publish reliable and timely information. The study's objective was to demonstrate the utility of a mHealth app prototype developed to enhance access to COVID-19 information in rural and remote communities in Zimbabwe. The prototype provides COVID-19 information such as statistics, preventative measures, self-diagnostics, social distancing information, and general hygiene to rural communities with limited access to official information channels on the pandemic. A design science research methodology was used to design, build and evaluate the COVID-19 mHealth app and fulfil the study's objectives. Thirty potential users participated in the evaluation of the prototype. The evaluation results show that potential users perceived that the prototype was useful, engaging, easy to learn, well designed, and provided relevant information. A strong correlation was observed between the design, engagement, functionality, and learnability. More widespread usability and more representative tests should be conducted to ascertain the efficacy and usability of the app. The study contributes literature on usability studies in developing countries. As more mHealth apps are being developed and deployed, more usability tests will be required to ensure that they are fit for purpose. The paper provides a baseline for developing related health information apps. Policymakers, health practitioners, technologists, and scholars can further investigate the deployment of digital technologies to improve healthcare and control the transmission and spread of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic many restrictions were implemented to prevent the spread of the disease. These restrictions included working from home (WFH) and self-isolation. However, this situation had a negative impact on our mental health, causing depression and anxiety in many employees around the world. In this context, we hypothesized that our home spaces could become a catalyst of positive emotions through the use of technology-supported home environments, which use cyber-physical systems to reduce mental health symptoms during the lockdown. We used a qualitative approach, through interviews and cultural probes, to understand the experience of people who were forced to work from home during the lockdown. Additionally, we used a design science approach to explore technology-supported solutions that could enhance our home spaces. The result is a system that mixes analog and digital elements to create interactive rooms, which have a positive impact on people's well-being. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, anthropomorphic service robots are continuously penetrating various domains of our daily lives. With this development, the urge for an interdisciplinary approach to responsibly design human-robot interaction (HRI), with particular attention to human dignity, privacy, compliance, and transparency, increases. This paper contributes to design science, in developing a new artifact, i.e., an interdisciplinary framework for designing responsible HRI with anthropomorphic service robots, which covers the three design science research cycles. Furthermore, we propose a multi-method approach by applying this interdisciplinary framework. Thereby, our finding offer implications for designing HRI in a responsible manner. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The global manufacturing industry plummeted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure the resilient and sustainable fostering of novel manufacturing innovations, the innovation system within which innovations are developed should be nurturing and supportive. Therefore, an analytical framework may be developed to guide innovators through the evaluation of manufacturing innovation systems. To develop the framework, the Design Science Research methodology is utilised, this paper presenting the theoretical framework development phase. The literature on the innovation system framework is utilised to develop a synthesis of innovation system tools to develop a CIMO-based EHA framework - an evolutionary guide to study a system's development over time to determine the influence of context, how and where transformation occurred, and the impact it had on the system's development. The framework also provides a method to define a system's outputs and socio-economic outcomes. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The digital transformation of the IT consulting domain recently gained momentum due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the range of IT consulting services that are fully digital is still very limited. Plus, there are no standardized and established methods for describing digital IT consulting services, nor there is any suitable tooling for digital IT consulting service provisioning. The present work aims to reduce this gap by contributing to establishing a well-defined approach to formally describing digital IT consulting services that could possibly be a candidate for standardization. Building upon (i) the ontology DITCOS-O, which provides the semantic basis for our approach, and (ii) the YAML-based description notation DITCOS-DN, which we leverage to describe digital IT consulting service models, we propose a graphical, web-based editor (called DITCOS-ModEd) to simplify service model maintenance. Following a design science based research process, we developed a prototype and empirically evaluated its applicability with the help of IT consultants. This first evaluation allowed us to identify some limitations and to plan specific improvements, both to the underlying artifacts DITCOS-O and DITCOS-DN, as well as to DITCOS-ModEd itself. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This paper aims to address the long-standing problem of suboptimal student team experiences for instructors and students by incorporating the student voice by co-creating a virtual team collaborative environment to improve team collaboration in the online classroom. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a novel design science research approach and relates two elaborated action design science research (eADSR) cycles that design, implement and evaluate the student team experience in online courses requiring teamwork. Findings: The outcome is a holistic view of a virtual team classroom environment specified with technologies and practices that may be employed to optimize the student team experience. The eADSR process yields non-obvious diagnoses and actionable steps for continually incorporating the ever-changing social aspects unique to students in addition to the evolving technological landscape. Practical implications: This paper is valuable to faculty members interested in applying eADSR processes to incorporate the student voice to address pedagogical and learning challenges in the classroom. Additionally, it provides a DSR-based model that can be implemented in the classroom to improve student team collaboration as well as transparency for the instructor and the students in terms of team member contributions with the goal to alleviate student and faculty frustrations. This topic is particularly relevant in light of COVID-19 as students and faculty alike are thrust into new online classroom environments. Originality/value: Employing eADSR in the classroom is a novel and unique approach to create a replicable model for virtual team collaboration that can be added to the classroom. © 2022, Diane Kutz, Barry Cumbie and Matthew Mullarkey.
ABSTRACT
Zero Trust (ZT) is a strategic approach to Cybersecurity. What is lacking in ZT is a holistic approach that addresses other departments and associated processes such as risk management, compliance, and finance. This paper elaborates on how a collaborative process via Group Support System sessions was applied to validate the ZT Framework. Next, we describe the design and engineering of a ZT artefact (dashboard) that addresses the problems at hand, according to Design Science Research (DSR). The last part of this paper outlines the empirical validation with GSS through practitioner-oriented research to better implement ZT strategies. It elaborates on how this validation was conducted during the COVID pandemic in 2020 with 73 security practitioners. The final result is a widely supported and validated framework with a strategic and holistic approach to better understand the required capabilities to operationalize a ZT security strategy successfully. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 created a great deal of personal, social, and economic anxiety in the USA and across the globe and exposed the inadequacy of traditional medical systems in handling large-scale emergencies. While telemedicine and virtual visits have become popular as a result, they end once a visit is over, hence lacking data persistence and continuity in caring for patients. Using the design science research approach with support from the theory of affordances, this paper proposes the design of a medical system (called wepital) in which patients receive care through their real avatars, enabling hospitals and other medical centers to provide immediate care that can continue for as long as a patient needs it. Real avatars are digital representations of patients that embody their real-time vital signs and health information. We have created a functional prototype to demonstrate how the proposed design can work. To assess the usability of the design, we have used the prototype in an experiment to provide medical advice to patient volunteers. Based on a theory-based conceptual model, we collected survey data after the experiment to identify factors contributing to the success of such a system, as measured by patient satisfaction. We report the factors that significantly contribute to the patients' satisfaction. As part of the application and policy implications of our work, we propose a nationwide system that could supplement and expand the capacity of medical systems at the national or even global level.
ABSTRACT
Purpose The value chain is an essential management tool for the elaboration of strategic organizational planning. However, there are few published works providing methods for the development of value chains. This research aims to present a model to develop the value chain for the public sector. Design/methodology/approach Action research was used with case study in the evaluation step. Findings This research presents a model for value chain development along seven steps, covering data collection planning to the formalization of final product acceptance. The model suggests executing these seven steps in three iteration levels: operational, tactical and strategic. Through case studies, six practical insights were also highlighted in this work. Research limitations/implications Given the absence of related work, one of the limitations is the lack of comparison with other methods of value chain development in the public sector. Originality/value There are practical guides to value chain development in the public sector;however, to the best of authors' knowledge, such guides have not been developed using research methods. In the literature, no works provide details on how value chain can be developed in the public sector. In addition, the constraints of face-to-face contacts during the COVID-19 pandemic led the research team to conduct remotely the model's development and evaluation in the case studies. The model presents elements that enable value chain development without face-to-face contact between the execution team and public institution's stakeholders.
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to define a problem to be studied and summarize previous research work done. Remote work or telework enterprise model has been a growing trend. The Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses to adopt a temporary remote-working mode. Now managers are investigating whether this d"new" working-mode is, or not, a better approach than the traditional working mode known as the "office model". The proposed framework will support the transformation process from a physical into a remote work model supported by applying digital tools and methods. Furthermore, the framework proposed in this work aims to help business decision makers to decide which organizational model they should adopt after Covid-19: full-remote;"hybrid" or partially remote;or physical, also known as "going back to the office". A simple and pragmatic framework is proposed to help organizations: understand if it's possible to transform a business from a physical ("at the office") to a full or partial remote model;define the main goals of this transformation;create a simple template to map the new digital enterprise architecture in terms of tools, data management, business processes and human resources (job functions and digital skills).
ABSTRACT
Prior management science literature proposes different visual methods for mapping ecosystems. These methods, however, largely lack an effective approach to visualizing intellectual property (IP) related risks and uncertainties appearing among stakeholders as the innovation ecosystem evolves. Using the design science research methodology, we develop a novel method that visualizes loci of IP risks and uncertainties, as well as dynamics of IP ownership and usage in evolving innovation ecosystems. We demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of the new method in uncovering IP related risks and uncertainties by presenting results from applying the method to the innovation ecosystem for crisis-critical products during the COVID-19 pandemic. The currently ongoing pandemic has caused structural changes to that innovation ecosystem with new relationships being formed between incumbent manufacturers and new entrants that have rushed into that innovation ecosystem to support the upscaling of manufacturing capacities. This article contributes to the literature on visual methods for innovation ecosystems and provides a new method for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to identify IP related risks and uncertainties that can arise when innovation ecosystems undergo structural changes. The method allows researchers to formulate and test new theories, as well as practitioners and policy makers to develop strategies to anticipate and mitigate IP risks and uncertainties. IEEE
ABSTRACT
Staying mobile is the key to ensuring high quality of life for older adults. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to live and move around independently becomes more critical for the most aging society. While several efforts have been made to invest in mobility solutions to help improve older adults’ mobility, there is still a lack of good practice and guidelines for developing such a niche Information Technology (IT) solution. In this paper, we report our experience of using Living Lab, a design science approach, to assess and capture the needs of mobility solutions for older adults. A semi-structured interview involving 25 older adults was conducted. We identified interesting and practical requirements/functionalities from the participants that might be otherwise overlooked if we followed the traditional software development process. The participants provided valuable feedback to help improve our mobility solution in two main areas, mainly the design and functionality of the application. The findings from this case study can potentially be applied for future work that attempts to address similar problems in the same domain. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all manufacturing sectors from basic products to luxury goods including the automobile industry. This has necessitated a new line of research on competency building, transparency, and sustainability in automotive supply chains. In this study, the authors examine the competencies required to improve the automotive supply chain routine operations to address the parts supply crisis from multitier suppliers in the post-COVID-19 environment. The authors also propose a list of competencies required in the automotive supply chains to deploy the transparency for sustainability (TfS) framework on a long-term basis. Design/methodology/approach The authors have adapted a cross-case study process using intervention-based research and a design science approach for use in this study and used multiple sources for data collection such as published literature, operational experience, and critical opinions of original equipment manufacturer representatives. The research design includes interviews with global OEMs practitioners as one of the relevant sources of information. Findings The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on automotive manufacturing operations and global supply chains is unprecedented. The TfS framework cycle has been validated using the real-world semiconductor supply crisis which deals with multitier sustainable supply chain management (MTSSCM), and the authors found that there are competency gaps when compared with existing literature. The list of key competencies identified along with the formulation of design propositions to facilitate both the supply crisis and collaboration among automotive firms to enhance their business performance were also presented. Research limitations/implications The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the automobile sector significantly. This situation has created many opportunities and obstacles, but this paper only considers the automotive semi-conductor shortage situation, which may be resolved in the near future when there are more installed capacities. Therefore, it is unclear whether the proposed responses will result in long-term solutions. Further adjustments may be needed to revisit the TfS framework. The research paper only addresses the automotive side of the current supply crisis, but more sustainability issues may arise in the future, which need to be dealt with separately. Practical implications Research findings may prove particularly interesting to global automotive vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and policy makers who are seeking to understand multitier supply networks to resolve the current challenges associated with the post-COVID-19 pandemic situation. Originality/value In addition to contributing to developing competency requirements, this study enhances the evolving research stream of MTSSCM by linking it to wider research applications of intervention-based research coupled with design science.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has put additional pressure on the healthcare systems worldwide. It also led to a significant shortage of blood products. Delaying surgeries resulted in an increased demand at peak times that aligned with a decrease in blood donations at the same time. While being crucial for many surgeries and also certain types of treatments, blood cannot be produced artificially, but healthcare systems rely on voluntary donations. The relatively short shelf-life of most products makes a close matching of demand and supply necessary. We argue that smartphone applications can help to motivate donors to donate blood when necessary, giving access to all relevant information and services. By applying the design science research methodology, we derived design principles for effective smartphone applications and present a conceptual model in the form of mock-ups. We performed two design cycles and evaluated the design principles and the conceptual model with regular, lapsed, first-time and non-donors from Germany in a focus group discussion. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Several measures taken to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have severely disrupted the accommodation sharing sector. This study attempts to find solutions to aid the recovery of the accommodation sharing sector via team efforts. Accordingly, we focus on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and collaboration. Despite the significant developments in AI technologies, there exists no research considering the application of AI in team collaboration. Utilizing the design science research method and collaboration engineering, we developed an AI-driven prototype system, AI-Driven, for collaboration process recommendation. Qualitative results show that the newly developed tool for collaboration process recommendation has achieved satisfactory performance. Furthermore, we investigated the antecedents and outcomes of trust in the AI-driven collaboration context. From a practical perspective, we propose several solutions to the challenges looming over the accommodation sharing sector according to collaboration deliverables. Furthermore, a system prototype was developed to facilitate collaboration process recommendation and provide procedural guidance.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated digital transformation system framework (IDTSF) to help support business leaders and teams in making their products, services, and operations more streamlined and competitive. The framework will help organizations to best meet user/customer needs with minimum waste and time and enables businesses to achieve efficiency compared with island and traditional sequential approaches. The proposed framework can also provide insights to help organizations to avoid common failures when deploying digital transformation initiatives. The paper follows the design science research (DSR) and the information systems design science research (ISDSR) methodologies to develop the IDTSF model and a practical design artifact. The main problems were the initiation, execution, and governance challenges associated with digital transformation. After identifying the problems and the objectives, a relevant IDTSF model was synthesized and tested as a design artifact. The results of the test of the proposed artifact showed its effectiveness and efficiency in facilitating the components of the model in creating a cohesive framework.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The existing digital healthcare solutions demand a service development approach that assesses needs, experience, and outcomes, to develop high-value digital healthcare services. The objective of this study was to develop a digital transformation of the patients' follow-up service after cardiac surgery, based on a remote patient monitoring service that would respond to the real context challenges. METHODS: The study followed the Design Science Research methodology framework and incorporated concepts from the Lean startup method to start designing a minimal viable product (MVP) from the available resources. The service was implemented in a pilot study with 29 patients in 4 iterative develop-test-learn cycles, with the engagement of developers, researchers, clinical teams, and patients. RESULTS: Patients reported outcomes daily for 30 days after surgery through Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and a mobile app. The service's evaluation considered experience, feasibility, and effectiveness. It generated high satisfaction and high adherence among users, fewer readmissions, with an average of 7 ± 4.5 clinical actions per patient, primarily due to abnormal systolic blood pressure or wound-related issues. CONCLUSIONS: We propose a 6-step methodology to design and validate a high-value digital health care service based on collaborative learning, real-time development, iterative testing, and value assessment.