In: "Personenbezug als Ressource und als Problem einer systematischen Dienstleistungsentwicklung", S. 85-296

Research indicates that social networking sites can be used to foster social interaction and reduce the risk of social isolation for the elderly demographic segment. Collaborative consumption, a new evolutionary step in SNS, enables the sharing of personal services, thus holding the potential to strengthen social integration and enable an independent lifestyle for the elderly. We therefore developed a local, service-oriented collaborative consumption platform called "Bring Dich ein!" with the purpose of facilitating social interaction across generations as well as the trade of peer-to-peer services. The platform was fully implemented in a participatory development process and evaluated in an extended pilot phase. The qualitative evaluation shows good usability for the elderly and high potential for the proposed concept within the target group.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) offers possibilities for promising new IT-based health care services that are resulting in new challenges for its design process. We introduce a novel approach for engineering AAL services (AALSDA) which combines methods from service engineering and participatory design. We demonstrate this approach by developing and implementing an electronic data capture system, NuTrack, for self-reporting of nutrition status. The approach uses different concepts for AAL service design and delivery: service engineering for standardizing and structuring service processes, reasonable IT-support for automation of parts of services that need no person–to-person interaction, participatory design to integrate end-users in the development process, and patient integration for personalizing and improving the depth of performance of service providers’ service delivery. For illustration, we present the case of chronic disease patients suffering from impaired fine motor skills. Our approach is applied in a pilot study with prototypes tested in focus groups and workshops with patients, caregivers and physicians. The results demonstrate good applicability and feasibility of the concept, and provide new insights for the future design, development and implementation of AAL services.

Self-reporting of patient data is a valuable tool for data capture in clinical trial studies and to support ailment treatment. However, traditional paper-based self-reporting is cost- and time-consuming and consequently suffers from low patient compliance. NFC-based electronic data capture methods allow a quick and easy self-reporting for patients and the real-time presentation of patient data enables direct medical intervention by physicians. Malnutrition, for example can be attenuated by continuous medical supervision of nutrition data. Consequently, we introduce an NFC-based prototype system called Touch?n?Document (TnD) that supports automatic aggregation and measurement of self-reported nutrition status. The hardware of TnD consists of a TFT-display that was outfitted with an array of NFC-tags on the backside. These allow an NFC-enabled mobile phone to be used as an input device to any software system, running on the TFT-display. The patients simply have to touch the display with their mobile device to log into the system and report and analyze their current nutrition. This ensures an adequate usability of the nutrition management system, especially for non tech-savvy or physically impaired patients, consequently increasing patient compliance. The technical feasibility, benefits, limitations and future research prospects of the prototype system are discussed in this manuscript.

Self-reporting of patient data is a valuable tool for data capture in clinical trial studies and to support ailment treatment. However, traditional paper-based self-reporting is costand time-consuming and consequently suffers from low patient compliance. NFC-based electronic data capture methods allow a quick and easy self-reporting for patients and the real-time presentation of patient data enables direct medical intervention by physicians. Malnutrition, for example can be attenuated by continuous medical supervision of nutrition data. Consequently, we introduce an NFC-based prototype system called Touch’n’Document (TnD) that supports automatic aggregation and measurement of self-reported nutrition status. The hardware of TnD consists of a TFT-display that was outfitted with an array of NFC-tags on the backside. These allow an NFC-enabled mobile phone to be used as an input device to any software system, running on the TFT-display. The patients simply have to touch the display with their mobile device to log into the system and report and analyze their current nutrition. This ensures an adequate usability of the nutrition management system, especially for non tech-savvy or physically impaired patients, consequently increasing patient compliance. The technical feasibility, benefits, limitations and future research prospects of the prototype system are discussed in this manuscript.

This study presents a novel approach towards establishing online social connections using Facebook and NFC-enabled mobile phones. There is increasing convergence between users’ real life social networks and their online social networks, with online connections following actual social acquaintance and interactions. Accordingly there is a need to provide users with means of accessing and establishing online connections in social networking platforms such as Facebook as and when they interact with other people in their real lives. The NFriendConnector is a prototype application which fulfills this functionality. This paper describes the design and development of the prototype application. The expectation confirmation theory is used to analyze the extent to which the NFriendConnector fulfills this inherent need among users and how this influences their intention to adopt and use the prototype. The proposed research model is tested in an experimental setup.

Patient data, particularly emergency data, must be available to medical personnel within a short time frame and independent of potential interruption of (mobile) network connections. Additionally, medical data is confidential information that must not openly be available to anyone with physical access to the storage media. The planned German electronic Health Card (eHC) is supposed to hold emergency data. However, the eHC smart card will not always be available to caregivers in emergency situations, e.g., unconscious patient, since it cannot be duplicated, customized or read without physical contact. We therefore propose the SemTag prototype which utilizes Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to provide secure and quick access to medical information. Caregivers have the opportunity to store encrypted medical data on tags for a particular group of addressees, e.g., for emergency cases in homecare environments. The tags can be placed on highly visible locations, e.g., entrance areas of homes and carried by the user inform of a token. Neither ubiquitous network access nor the unique eHC is necessary, to view emergency medical data within home care environments. Hence NFC tags can be regarded as a tool for information and identification alternative to distributed information systems for the collaboration of caregivers. This manuscript shows the technical storage and encryption process of emergency data on NFC tags. The technical feasibility, benefits, limitations and future research prospects of the prototype system are discussed.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of NFriendConnector, a prototype application that allows for better integration between online and offline social networks. Online social networks are currently used to maintain and strengthen existing real-life social connections, rather than establishing ties that exist only online. However, users incur significant time and search related costs in replicating a naturally occurring social interaction using a social networking site (SNS). Therefore, there exists a gap between initiating social contact in real-life versus initiating social contact via an online social network. Using the design science paradigm, our research addresses this gap by introducing NFriendConnector. This application allows users to map their offline interactions, as and when they take place, onto their SNS presence, therefore making it possible to complement offline social interactions with SNS profile information. The prototype is implemented using Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled mobile phones and Facebook. We evaluate the prototype in an experimental setting using expectation confirmation theory (ECT) as the theoretical framework. Findings show that NFriendConnector was able to satisfy users, therefore indicating a successful design exercise. We discuss the implications of this research in the context of current developments in online social networking.

Traditional paper-based longitudinal or cross section panel surveys, used for market research are time and cost consuming and can suffer from contaminating effects like social desirability bias or respondent conditioning. Electronic data capture methods can improve the time and cost efficiency of market research panels. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology allows a seamless and non-intrusive integration of information systems into everyday life environments. This enables the automated electronic acquisition of media usage data, without direct interference with the media consumption and thus without the contaminating effects of traditional panel surveys. Consequently, we introduce an RFID-based prototype system called MUSE (Media Usage in Supportive Environments) that supports automatic measurements of print media usage in public environments. MUSE was tested in an initial field study over the course of six weeks in the waiting room of a German medical practice. The study showed that MUSE could monitor the usage of print media, laid out for waiting patients, autonomously and with minimal errors. Furthermore, the RFID technology was perceived as non-intrusive. This study is the first to show how RFID enhanced real world settings can be used for non-intrusive media usage analysis in real life. Based on the findings we derive recommendations for future research for RFID supported media usage analysis.

In recent years instant messaging tools have been successfully introduced to support communication and collaboration processes in work environments. Research suggests that the use of instant messaging tools lead to an increased feeling of connectedness, social presence and awareness within a collaborative group. Consequently, the goal of our research is to improve communication and collaboration within a group through automated and real-time dissemination of presence information, using instant messaging software. The paper describes LocaTag, a system that enhances instant messaging tools with real-time location information through the use of NFC enabled mobile devices. The LocaTag application is implemented as a prototype system that provides the Skype instant messaging application with automated status messages, reflecting the current location of a user. This location information is derived from a NFC-tag based check-in/-out routine incorporating the mobile phone of the user. The tie-in of NFC based location information and existing, broadly used instant messaging applications is an approach towards the real-timed is semination of presence information in collaborative groups. Its technical feasibility, limitations and future research approaches are discussed in this manuscript.