The purpose of this paper is to propose outline for a new product development framework to be utilized by Latvian ICT companies and technology startups. Design/methodology: To achieve this objective, semi-structured expert interviews with 12 executives from Latvian ICT companies and startups were held to identify common factors for these companies that have contributed to the success of new product launch in the market. Findings: The paper summarizes new product development success factors, outlines organizational management aspects to be implemented for improving product development process from the managerial perspective, and suggests possible metrics that should be used to measure these factors. Practical implication: the insights gathered for the intended new product development framework could be also applied by managers of established and mature ICT companies to ensure successful internal transformation with aim to maintain competitiveness against emerging startups and promote internal entrepreneurial activities not only in Latvia, but also abroad.
The present research presents an improved recruitment and training model focused on increasing physician reputation and loyalty to retain good physicians in the provinces of Peru and thereby increase competitiveness and profitability of the health care organization. Consequently, a pilot test of the model was implemented in an assisted reproductive technology (ART) clinic based in Chiclayo and Piura using a recruitment process checklist. The data resulted after the implementation were analyzed using the success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments of the new physician and a structured engagement survey to determine retention by validation. In the new recruitment model, the new physician achieved a success rate of 46.15% in IVF pregnancies. The main physician participation was reduced from 69% to 48% without a decrease in total sales. The level of engagement achieved by the new physician was 96%, surpassing the average of the clinic’s medical team of 79%.
In the process of design decision-making, in order to establish a more scientific design evaluation method, help enterprises determine the best city bus design plan and guarantee the best economic, social and cultural benefits of design results. In this paper, the analytic hierarchy process is used to analyze the form of the city bus, and the importance proportion of the appearance of the product is studied. The design project of DFAC(DFAC: It is the abbreviation of Dongfeng Automobile Company, which is the very famous Auto company in China.)-6851H4E is taken as the research object, and the established evaluation model is verified by practice. These results show that the scientific design evaluation model is constructed, and the progress of the design is effectively promoted in the process of product design, which avoids the uncertainty of design, reduces the risk of design, and brings good economic benefits to the enterprise.
Many multi-task operations require human operators to simultaneously perform visual surveillance and a secondary task. As the trend in the technological advancement of surveillance systems indicates high likelihood of heavy interdependence between human and technology in the foreseeable future, it is paramount to venture beyond the context of driving, an area where similar research is saturated in, and investigate the functional field of view (FFoV) of multi-tasking human operators in other operations involving surveillance. In the present study, we investigated the effects of multi-tasking and stimulus parameters (size and contrast) on the response accuracy and response time for identifying visual targets appearing within one’s visual field. Mixed analyses of variance revealed that only response time was negatively affected by multi-tasking, while both response accuracy and response time deteriorated as either the size or contrast of the visual targets decreased. In addition, a significant interaction effect between the investigated parameters of the visual target on response accuracy implies the need for multi-task operations involving surveillance to consider such and future findings critically as they evolve their technology and systems to aid the human operators. The current findings provide insights for surveillance and air traffic control (ATC) operations in future studies.
In 2018, an inter-institutional cooperation agreement was signed between the School of Production Engineering of Universidad del Azuay (Ecuador) and Mensajeros de la Paz Foundation, for the execution of a social entrepreneurship sustainability project. For ten years, this Foundation has empirically developed personal and domestic hygiene products for its consumer market; however, the business activity itself motivates to seek the generation of economic income through the diversification and commercialization of its products, which boosted the incubation of the Aquamarinna Company. The corporate purpose of this venture aims at the labor inclusion of people with disabilities within the production process, who in turn are also beneficiaries of the Foundation. With a view to structuring the company at all levels, a Strategic Addressing was developed, supported by Process Management with the objective of having a structure that ensures the sustainability of this venture, maintaining its social focus of inclusion.
According to the Automated Driving Roadmap ERTRAC 17, only vehicles of Level 5 may not need human interference. The current adaptive cruise control system or more advanced automated driving solutions below Level 5 require, therefore, that a human driver takes over, if an extraordinary situation occurs. A critical safety problem may be caused by the very short time span available to the driver. It has been recently demonstrated, mostly in application to the aerospace domain, how probabilistic analytical modeling (PAM) could effectively complement computational simulation techniques in various human-in-the-loop (HITL) related missions and off-normal situations, when the reliability of the equipment (instrumentation), both hard- and software, and the performance of the human contribute jointly to their likely outcome. Our objective is to extend this approach, with appropriate modifications, to safety analyses of automated driving applications.
A Sociotechnical System (STS) perspective offers potentially valuable insights into problems in a wide range of domains of society. The development of STS-based methods provide practical help for organisations when planning and evaluating new forms of designing the work systems. The current study provides an up-to date review of STS-based methods in seven different domains including (1) specialist STS methods, (2) the human factor, human behaviour and ergonomics, (3) safety, risk, reliability and accident prevention, (4) complexity, (5) information systems, information technology and the internet of things, (6) organisational design, work system and management studies and (7) design science. Based on a systematic review, 106 STS-based methods have been identified and grouped by relevant domains and summarised to form a unified list of the available methods for use by anyone involved in the system and organisational design.
This project investigated how different modes of interaction of drivers with a smartphone (i.e., manual texting vs. voice usage) affected driver’s situational awareness in both conventional and semi-automated vehicles. The study, which was executed in a human-in-the-loop setting, shows that participants expressed personal preferences for the vocal interface in all the tested scenarios. However, few metrics actually showed statistical significance and an improvement of performance with the vocal interface as compared to the manual one.
Traditional interactive approach which has been developed very mature has evolved from mouse control to many other forms. Eye controlled, as one of new interaction form, will help people with physical disability to manipulate devices as normal users. Meanwhile, because of its natural and high-efficiency, eye controlled system could be the future trend not only for the disabled but also ordinary people. This study proposed an eye controlled system frame to help researchers and designers to explore eye control system interface design because eyes are the only real-time input medium for eye control system. This study firstly analyzes and summarize the difference of eye-control system and traditional interface through surveys and literature reviews. Then according to the uniqueness of eye-controlled interaction, an eye control interactive logic algorithm is developed through the Tobii API combined with the Unity API. Experiments investigated the effects of color combination of icon on visual search performance were done based on the proposed system.
This study tested how two different interaction modalities with a smartphone (manual texting and vocal replies) affected task loads perceived by drivers places in various driving scenarios. The study employed human-in-the-loop simulation, and involved both a city environment (driven in conventional manual mode) and a highway environment (driven first in automated mode and then requiring takeover from the driver). The interface was tested in relation to following GPS instructions while being prompted to reply to texts at specific times in the simulation. The results compare the overall mental load scores of the manual texting condition for both city and highway scenarios to the vocal reply condition. Unweighted NASA TLX data shows that the vocal interface led to lower scores; however, statistical significance was shown only for the city scenarios for physical load and effort calculations.
This paper presents an approach to capture the deliberate perception and comprehension behavior of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) by utilizing their eyeball and hand movement. Hence, a new fixation-click count signature, involving ATCOs fixating on aircraft’s track or label, before performing respective commands within a specified operational duration, is derived. 88 one-hour real time simulations involving a remote eye tracker and scenarios mimicking actual air traffic were conducted for participants from three expertise levels. Results show that this signature is common amongst all participants for both incoming and outbound aircraft. Furthermore, addition visual attention span is required with increasing commands issued, as a higher fixation count is exhibited with more clicks performed for the one-hour duration. This signature could also be used to differentiate the expertise levels of ATCOs, as experts were found to exhibit the most fixation count across all click counts, followed by intermediates and novices.
The arrival of the Internet information age promotes the development of electronic and information platform - website. A website is a provider of information and a platform for users to communicate and interact. Website interface design must consider human cognitive factors, emotional factors, so the website interface design and interaction design is particularly important. Through experimental demonstration and research, this paper takes shopping website as the research object to analyze the mental model of users in website interface design and the influence of different users’ occupations on the mental model. According to the conclusion of the analysis, firstly, the change process of user mental model in interface interaction is proposed. Secondly, based on the user mental model, this paper summarizes the design principles of the website. Finally, this paper provides a new way of thinking for the study of website accessibility.
Senior Citizen Falls are debilitating and harmful events. Not only does it negatively affect morality, psychology, self-esteem but also tends to be very repetitive and life costly. To prevent future falls, the outpatient senior citizen needs to be equipped with real-time monitoring sensors such as, a wrist band or a sensor necklace. Nonetheless, In the world where real-time sensor monitoring systems are not available due to connectivity limitations and economic affordability, the onus of senior citizen fall predicting, and preventing, needs to be on cognitive systems that are democratized in nature and yield learning from population health analysis. In this paper, we apply population collaborative filtering techniques and artificial intelligent models to cohort high risk senior citizen clusters and alert healthcare professionals and primary care family members.
Climate change is impacting milk production worldwide. For instance, increased heat stress in cows is causing average-sized dairy farms losing thousands of milk gallons each year; drastic climate change, especially in developing countries, pushing small farmers, farmers with less than 10 to 25 cattle, below the poverty line and is triggering suicides due to economic stress and social stigma. It’s profoundly clear that current dairy agriculture practices are falling short to counter the impacts of climate change. What we need are innovative and intelligent dairy farming techniques that employ best of traditional practices with data infused insights to counter negative effects of climate change. To achieve innovative and intelligent dairy farming techniques, we need to disseminate state of art data science to masses. In other word, provide the state of art data science algorithms to every food harvesting citizen data scientist, farmer. The democratization of artificial intelligence to farmers, importantly, is not only empowers farmers to understand the patterns and signatures of climate change but also provides the ability to forecast the impending climate change adverse events and recommends data driven insights to counter the negative effects of climate change. With the availability of new data tools, farmers can not only improve their standard of life but also conquer, importantly, perennial “climate change related suicide” issue. It’s our staunch believe that the gold standard for the success of the democratization of artificial intelligence is no farmer life loss due to negative effects of climate change. In this paper, we propose an innovative machine learning Sensor edge approach that considers the impact of climate change and develops artificial intelligent (AI) models that is validated globally but enables localized solution to thwart impacts of climate change. The paper presents prototyping dairy IoT sensor solution design as well as its application and certain experimental results.
Bahía de Caráquez is a tourist destination since the 80s for its excellent cuisine and shrimp boom. It is currently a city abandoned by massive migration because of two devastating earthquakes above 7 on the Richter scale in the years 1998 and 2016 respectively. This reality has caused precarious conditions due to recurrent seismic movements in recent years. The coastal territory has a rich diversity in natural resources, bordering islands and estuaries with various tourist attractions that have a high economic value. This area is influenced by changes in land and sea, so that its coasts are highly vulnerable to environmental phenomena. The objective of the present investigation is to design a strategic plan for the renovation of the tourist infrastructure under earthquake-resistant criteria, in addition to the reactivation and potentialization of gastronomic tourism in Bahía de Caráquez of Canton Sucre beach. The systemic approach will make it possible to define the guidelines of the strategic plan for the development and socioeconomic reactivation through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected statistical data. The spatial and descriptive analysis of the data obtained in the field proposes a functional and sustainable city model for both local residents and visitors through the gentrified tourism conversion model. The proposal of infrastructures and tourist nodes will contemplate the location of geological faults as well as the identification of critical and favorable points for the establishment of poles of socioeconomic development.
Accidents in industries cause great damage to human life, economy and environment. In order to regulate and supervise safety work effectively, it’s needed to measure the risk level of enterprise, industry and area. First, a basic framework of index system was established. Second, the method to determine index weight and compute risk score was proposed. Finally, the risk evaluation model for enterprise was proposed and applied in Taian city. This method will provide a good means to estimate the actual risk level of enterprise, industry and area year by year. By this method, the risk of enterprise, industry and area can be compared directly and the managing cost of safety regulation and supervision will be reduced.
This research focuses on interactive multimedia design that promotes the cognition of works in art museums. As an important contributor to social aesthetic education, art museums should employ modern science and technology to vividly display and profoundly interpret the connotations of art. Three methods were used in this research as follows: first, the relations of humans with art museums and digital media art were summarized; second, the behavioral habits of target groups in specific art museums were observed; third, the importance of multimedia interactive technology in the information dissemination of art museum works was summarized. This research evaluated the practical significance of various theoretical results from three perspectives and explored the penetration of these theories in the development of interactive application design in art museums.
The aim of this work was to construct a mental model of automation in the area of vehicle guidance. The users' understanding and mental model affect the safety and user experience. The qualitative method Card Sorting was applied with 25 participants. The task was to categorize cards on driving automation according to the participants' own understanding. Analysis showed that the mental model of automation in the area of vehicle guidance is made up of three levels: the level "Information and Driver" incorporates functions, which do not influence lateral and longitudinal guidance of the vehicle. Systems that interfere or control the lateral and longitudinal guidance of the vehicle are included in the level "Assisted to Automated Driving". The level "Autonomous Driving" specifies systems that operate the vehicle independently while no driver has to be present. Findings indicate a mismatch between the mental model of users and well-known taxonomies of automated driving.
This study aims to examine the art museum experience of visitors in detail through eye tracking in the aspect of the visitor-centered approach, which is important in the contemporary art museum. To achieve this goal, we conducted the eye-tracking experiment and in-depth interview to grasp the interest and needs of visitors. We suggest the possibility of deriving their interests and needs by studying the gaze data (e.g. duration and the number of fixations) of the visitors in the museum.
Life-friendly payment platforms, offered by all-in-one applications, have transformed the way in which consumers interact with financial and non-financial services. This study investigates user experiences in the digital financial sphere via an innovative payment application, called PAYCO, from a consumer-centric perspective to provide practical insights to application developers into the domain requirements and opportunities, and thereby, improve user experience. From March 1st, 2016 to February 28th, 2019, 11,586 user-reviews of the application were collected from the Google Play website. The results of this study revealed that the reviews shifted from negative to positive and from those related to the major functions of the application to multiple functions of a life-supporting payment platform. These reviews collectively facilitate toward building a robust framework that addresses the changing consumer expectations in the payment space. It is envisaged that the adoption of this approach will help enhance the quality of human life.
