Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering

Especially in the fashion business consumers nowadays ask continuously for new styles and products, which forces companies to generate new ideas and innovative products faster than ever. Besides, consumers interact with each other on social media platforms and exchange their problems, needs, preferences, and ideas. With 95 Mio. daily postings on Instagram, it becomes obvious that such a platform is a huge data source containing important and valuable information regarding product requirements, customer tastes and needs, and upcoming trends. This paper presents a model to identify trendsetters based on their social media profiles and interactions on Instagram by using multiple machine learning classifiers. The model is trained with data of 665 user accounts, considering 59 features. Maximum Entropy Model performs the best with a F1-score of 66.67%.

In 2019 the Coburg University of Applied Sciences offered the course “consume less, create more” to an interdisciplinary group of master students. The course offered a theoretical part including topics like sustainability, maker culture and upcycling as well as a practical part. The practical part was carried out through different project teams using old materials and unused objects from the student’s households to create usable products for the students themselves. The course took place at the maker space of Coburg University, offering classic tools and machines like laser cutters and 3d printers. The challenge was to find different criteria for sustainable DIY projects, produce at least one prototype and to create a tutorial. The main question to be answered is what conclusions can be derived for Digital Services concerning Sustainability from the course. The main methods are discussions with the students accompanied by individual interviews carried out by the authors. Also, observation is used to analyze how Digital Services are used during the creation of the different items. The findings are suggestions for various areas and ideas for Digital Services that concern Sustainability and target an interdisciplinary audience with higher education.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the individual perceived creative self-efficacy as an effect of creativity methods, which target vividness, within the context of teaching innovation processes in higher education as well as in business context tested in the field. The three creativity methods which are investigated, are concepts and prototypes developed based on key ideas of design, tailored to the experimental design. Our approach is founded on a practice-based school of innovating. Three User case studies are conducted amongst interdisciplinary Master students, who are mostly employed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The gained experiences and results from the case studies are reviewed by a questionnaire and report experience, e.g. the perceived creativity scored according to the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Vividness and Creative Self-Efficacy.

Bodyhacking, Human Augmentation, Human Enhancement and Transhumanism. These terms describe a relatively new trend describing the development of humans towards cyborgs. While some people regard this as a threat for mankind others see it as a huge potential. This paper provides an overview of the most common developments and closes with the experiences of a self-experiment describing the practicability of NFC implants.

User surveys utilizing standardized questionnaires are a common tool for determining the user experience of a website and forms an important basis for the user-oriented optimization of the offer. The sample recruitment is often done passively, such as through link banners placed in various positions on the website. However, the question arises whether the location of the survey link on the website has an impact on the user rating of the website. The present article examines this question using a comprehensive website evaluation with two identical surveys that were placed in two different locations on a web page (homepage and order confirmation page). A total of 524 persons participated in the study. The results show statistically significant differences in user ratings. Participants who joined via the order confirmation page were significantly more positive compared to those who came to the survey from the homepage.

This paper takes a look at why people enjoy listening to dreadful and frightening music. The experience of listening to Black Metal is reconstructed with Immanuel Kant’s notion of the Sublime and in contrast to classical music. The paper states that the feeling of Sublimity afforded by Black Metal differs from that of classical music by the first’s lack of the feeling of security. It concludes that Black Metal thus allows us profound experiences of the world not to found elsewhere in art.

With the evolution of the world economy from manufacturing and goods to a services context, the focus of researchers and businesses alike has shifted to building an understanding of how to foster service innovation. Design techniques, such as design thinking, have been utilized to engage customers in service co-creation to shape their service engagement for maximum benefit and to introduce new ideas and innovative approaches. This paper focuses on research approaches to study service innovation in commercial organizations, and findings from those experiences. Insights related to data and methods, organizational ecosystems, customer interactions and employee engagement will be discussed, with particular focus on how these impact service innovations.

Many organizations face pressures to stay on the “cutting-edge,” that is, leverage emerging technologies to demonstrate currency and competitiveness in fast-changing, sociotechnical industrial environments. These challenges reside at the core of a growing array of organizations selling “innovation-as-a-service” offerings. These offerings capitalize on both clients’ ambitions and also insecurities over their ability to provide state-of-the-art products and services worthy of the label innovation. What is the work required to transform novel inventions into innovations? In this paper, we report on ethnographic fieldwork studying innovation-as-a-service activities at a large, global technology and services company. These activities focus on the integration of novel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities in service offerings aimed to provide “innovation” to clients. Our emergent findings center on: relationing (nurturing the various relationships implicated in each engagement) and bundling (crafting compelling, yet mutable documentation for diverse audiences).

The benefits of adopting data science are increasingly clear in a variety of industries, yet adoption rates remain low. In this paper we examine the barriers faced by organizations in adopting data science approaches in the context of service innovation. We first characterize three types of barriers: legal framework, organizational challenges, and risks. The legal framework around data science is in a state of change, and certain aspects are outdated and fragmented. Organizational issues include recruitment and a lack of diversity. Finally, risk is inherent in any business, but data science investments may be especially uncertain due to the fundamental role that datasets play and the lack of familiarity that those making decisions may have with data science. We present results in which we identify and expand on the links between these barriers and service innovation using data science.

Fostering an organizational culture that builds employee engagement has received increased focus in recent years in the business, management, and organizational communication literature. A novel and promising approach to examine and foster employee engagement is to apply service design principles within an organization with a focus on value co-creation, co-design, and agility in the dimensions of people, technologies, organization, and information. In this paper, we discuss the application of service design approaches to encourage and enhance employee engagement in an industrial setting, the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, what can be measured in a real-life setting, and future directions and opportunities for this line of research.

In this article, we present a study of scientific discovery through trace data. Using data produced from (1) scientists’ interactions on computer systems and (2) meeting transcripts generated from weekly project meetings, we analyzed the interactions and conversations of scientists surrounding a scientific discovery to determine whether trace data could provide markers for the discovery. The results describe the process of interacting with computer tools and disseminating results and highlight such markers. This study shows trace data, and advanced computational techniques are useful mechanisms for identifying work trajectories and, in some cases, provide context to work behaviors.

Architecture is critical to Human Centered Service Design (HCSD), which is understood as an outside-in-viewpoint that focuses on value creation and social value from a human perspective [1, 2]. The architecture has many roles to play that are relevant to the process and output of HCSD, especially for the coordination, integration, application and governance of resources and organizational capabilities. In this way the motivation of this work is to answer the question to what extent architecture enables and supports the value co-creation process.

Insurtechs are changing the insurance industry more and more. A major driver for these changes is their ability to quickly build capabilities that create direct value for their customers. Value co-creation and actor engagement are key mechanisms at play in the design of straightforward, innovative value propositions and the stimulation of service design and new service development. Subsequently, we present our case study research of a fully digitized health insurance company in Germany which is striving to innovate by (re)designing practices to institutionalize new health services and solutions. Our aim was to study and understand environmental properties, roles, and relationships of actors and resources in service innovation in the given real-life business context.

We explore using a conversational agent to simplify healthcare user’s access to business intelligence. We are extending an initial prototype based on the observations from a user study. As we describe, the improvements enhance the user experience and facilitate user’s completing tasks. Most basic we extended the agent to help users become familiar with using the conversational interface itself. Related to the agent’s business intelligence, we expand examples and descriptions. Finally, the improvements broaden the audience so that even non-healthcare experts can complete some tasks even if they might not fully appreciate the insights of the results. This work is part of IBM Watson Health’s initiative to leverage cognitive computing to create healthcare solutions.

In times of digital transformation platforms gain increased relevance in service ecosystems. Despite this relevance, design knowledge for digital platforms is scarce. To bridge this gap, we build upon a longitudinal case study of the IBM health records service platform to analyze several phases within its lifecycle and derive design principles that aim for service innovation in digital platforms. Thus, we shed light on the design and the application of mechanisms to coordinate value co-creation on service platforms embedded in service ecosystems.

Over the past four decades the service sector shaped advanced forms of interaction between human and technology actors with a wide range of actor combinations like human-to-human, human-to-technology, or technology-to-technology. The understanding of workforce, on the other hand, has remained largely unchanged in recent decades. Workforce, workforce planning, workforce management, workforce diversity and so on, focus almost exclusively on the human actor. Therefore, the authors see the need for a new understanding of workforce and for the explanation of the mechanisms and interdependencies of workforce management. Based on the theoretical concepts of Service Science and S-D Logic as well as the approaches of meso- and micro-foundation the context of workforce and workforce management is studied and a conceptual framework for workforce management and a new definition of workforce is derived.

The paper proposes a multi-level design framework on basis of SDA (Service Dominant Architecture) for building Systems of Engagement (SoE). Meso-level transformational mechanisms (processes) play a key role in linking the micro-level actor engagement with the macro-level of co-creation of value. SDA proposes a framework and design environment to design and operate service systems. SDA provides a knowledge base of design knowledge which can be translated and incorporated into solution designs. Focus of our research is on how organizations can enable actor engagement building Systems of Engagement (SoE) using Service Dominant Architecture (SDA). This is a continuation of our previous research endeavours and yielded results on SDA.

Developing new service business models that provide human-centered service offerings rely on deep insights on the needs and requirements of customers. Companies that have been on the market for some time, often collected large amounts of data on their customers that can be applied to achieve deep customer understanding and develop artificial intelligence. Applying a single case study that comprises the development of a personal health advisory service for stroke prevention in Germany, this research analyzed the mechanism of AI in the development of human-centered service offerings. With this, we briefly analyze and discuss the role of data, artificial intelligence and its explainability to gain customer understanding and proximity and to achieve human-centered service.

As the world’s elderly population increases, driving accidents involving older adults has become an increasingly serious social problem. Previous studies have suggested cognitive impairments as one of the risk factors for future accidents. However, it remains unclear whether and how such future accident risks related to cognitive impairments can be predicted by using health monitoring technologies. In this study, we collected speech data from simulated conversations between 38 healthy older adults and a voice-based dialogue system. We followed up with the participants 1.5 years later and found that 17 of them had experienced near-accidents within the past year. We then built a binary classification model using the originally obtained speech data and found through leave-one-out cross-validation that it could predict whether a person would have a near-accident experience with 78.9% accuracy. Our preliminary results suggest that speech data from voice-based interaction systems might help older drivers recognize future accident risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates older adults aged 60+ will double by 2050 with 80% living in low to moderate income countries. As remote research studies supported by digital devices increase separation between researchers and participants, it is important to maintain participant trust. Research participants have expressed an interest in accessing both group and individual level results, which are not readily available. To bridge this gap, we engaged residents of a local continuing care senior housing community (CCSHC) to co-design documents used to convey information about study results. The process informed the refinement of informational materials for communicating scientific research that the CCSHC community considers accessible and meaningful.

This study aimed to identify how technology transforms the work of hemodialysis nurses. The methodology was field research with a qualitative approach using the analysis of the subject’s speech. Eleven questionnaires were administered to nurses working in hemodialysis clinics in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The results pointed out that technology evolution gives conflicting expectations to the nurses that can be positive and negative. A positive expectation is the hope of enhancing care through the improvement of the contact nurse-patient. However, they also fear that technology causes dependence and expertise loss.

The general design process starts with defining problems or understanding the target audience. The world is moving toward a more technology-driven society that is pushed by machine learning and artificial intelligence which is also called the 4th wave of the industrial revolution. From this, questions arise regarding how to prepare design students for this changing paradigm in their future careers. Creativity, critical thinking in decision making, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming essential in the era of the 4th wave of the industrial revolution. This paper presents personal perspectives based on the author’s experience in the graphic design process over the last 30 years, starting with questioning the design process and methods that have been used in the design disciplines. The ultimate goal of this study is to open a dialogue, through a case study, on how to prepare students in this rapidly changing world and discuss the future direction in design education.

The Design Department at California State University, Long Beach held an interdisciplinary design thinking and communication workshop, Homeless in LA: Access Design for the Other 90 Percent, on December 6, 2019. This workshop, facilitated by Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar of the Smithsonian, was designed to engage a broad audience of stakeholders in a series of activities that explore the subject of homelessness in Southern California. This case study examines a collaborative approach to user engagement as a way to generate innovative strategies to address homelessness in our community and to communicate design ideas around this issue to a broad range of stakeholders.

This study is to introduce a new approach for the UXD (User Experience Design) pedagogy for graphic design students to expand their critical thinking for user-centered design. A variety of UX/UI (User Experience/User Interface) disciplines has been introduced into design education, but a single class and/or elective course appears to be inadequate to keep up with rapidly changing technologies and services for user experiences. Given the limited time and condition for graphic design students to learn various UX/UI disciplines beside required other studio coursework, this study investigates an effective learning model of UX/UI pedagogy approached by developing the UXD conceptual framework with storytelling in the design thinking process. This study found an impact on students’ learning outcomes that demonstrated new paradigm-shifting significant perspectives of the user’s experiences beyond visual design.

It is a graphic design educator’s responsibility that undergraduate students understand the needs and wants of society. Beyond printed matter and digital interfaces, designers have the ability to assist people in remaining active, independent individuals in society. Using several user-experience testing methods including attitudinal and behavioral testing and qualitative research, students completed a social impact project through the lens of empathy. Looking at different perspectives from a wide range of people who might be touched (or not) by their topic, and considering their thoughts as potential insights was essential to a successful project. Through in-depth meetings and design research methods, student teams developed a problem statement related to their chosen topic, which was used for the development of the brand and all of the other design decisions through the project completion.

Emerging applications of artificial intelligence (AI) such as: predictive software integrated into websites like Amazon Prime, autonomous features integrated into automobiles, or smart home technologies such as those found in Alexa or Siri, have an ever-increasing impact on business, industry, research, and higher education. New trends and innovations in the use of AI technology in design, user experience, and behavioral psychology will change how we design for user experiences, how we interact with technology and it will fundamentally change us as humans. Steven Pinker describes the 21st century as the “Conceptual Age.” He says that we have progressed from the agriculture Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age and now to the Conceptual Age. It is characterized by technology and globalization with an emphasis on creators, empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. This transition leads to the EQ-Based AI areas where those skills are a focus (Pink 2006).

When we mitigate misinformation by restricting information flow, we make a trade-off between restricting falsehoods and limiting knowledge. How can we do the most good? This paper introduces popular approaches including social constructionism, linguistics, heuristic, and empiric. Simulation allows researchers to consider information networks of differing size and connectivity. Results indicate that an empiric approach that preferentially limits falsehoods allows researchers to tune this trade off.

This paper considers everyday software engineering (SE) work practices in applied artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) development projects. As contemporary AI/ML systems become increasingly embedded into a wide array of everyday digital services, a number of concerns emerge over the opaque and “black box” constitution of these technical capabilities. How do software developers come to understand complex AI/ML capabilities and how do they explain their inner-workings to others? This paper empirically investigates these questions by drawing on an ethnographic study of AI/ML research and development at a large, global technology and services company, highlighting the situated, careful labor involved in configuring access around AI/ML systems and services. By rendering these situated practices visible, this paper contributes important provocations for current discourses on AI explainability (XAI) and interpretability: rather than a quality or component of a model, system, or interface, access emerges through ongoing, unfolding, and effortful sociotechnical encounters.

Artificial intelligence is currently one of the most discussed topics in service companies. With the help of current data from an empirical study among German companies, experiences and effects of artificial intelligence were examined. As an approach for analysis, a typology of service companies has been derived on the basis of work-related characteristics and then used to analyze the role of artificial intelligence. The result of the analysis shows different strategies in using artificial intelligence depending on the type of service.

Artificial Intelligence drives business model innovation. In this context, our paper examines major amendments of business model elements (value proposition, value creation and value capture) due to artificial intelligence implementation into products and services. Based on a literature review changes like enhanced autonomous and adaptive value proposition, intense use of data and stronger collaboration in ecosystems as well as adapted revenue models are identified, analyzed and presented in this paper.

We previously proposed a conceptual framework of a smart servicescape wheel (SSW) in order to delineate the broad continuum of environmental constraints in smart homes for health care services (SHHSs) [1]. This framework was established through expert analysis and an extensive literature review, and its structure and applicability must be validated. Accordingly, in this study, we aimed to qualitatively verify the SSW framework and improve it in order to improve its applicability. Thirty scenario-portraying movie clips on SHHSs were collected from the official YouTubeTM channels of ICT companies. The categories of the SSW were prepared for an analytic framework. We analyzed the movie clips using framework analysis and validated the SSW’s applicability along with some improvement points. Moreover, the results implied the opportunity for new service ideations and additional dimensions of constraint layers such as service interactions.

Marketing logic is an important element of economic theory. As the science of economics evolves towards a deeper understanding of subjective value, marketing logic must evolve with it. Value is identified as an experience that lies entirely within the customer domain. Service providers can not create value, or even co-create it. Value is recognized as a creation of the individual customer, entirely within their own service system. The unit of analysis is the individual customer and the individual experience. The paper draws a parallel with quantum physics, where “the rules are different” [1]. Marketing logic and uncertainty must be reconstructed to deal with value uncertainty, and marketing itself can be re-defined.

The advent of chatbots in customer service solutions received increasing attention by research and practice throughout the last years. However, the relevant dimensions and features for service quality and service performance for chatbots remain quite unclear. Therefore, this research develops and tests a conceptual model for customer service quality and customer service performance in the context of chatbots. Additionally, the impact of the developed service dimensions on different customer relationship metrics is measured across different service channels (hotline versus chatbots). Findings of six independent studies indicate a strong main effect of the conceptualized service dimensions on customer satisfaction, service costs, intention to service reusage, word-of-mouth, and customer loyalty. However, different service dimensions are relevant for chatbots compared to a traditional service hotline.

The paper discusses four research questions on the human side of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology one by one, from an S-D logic perspective. The main question is “Can humans learn from AI?”, and the three subsidiary questions are “Can AI be a legitimate actor?”, “Can humans work comfortably with AI just as they do with humans?”, and “Can humans perform better with support from AI?”. We conjecture that the answers to all the questions are YES. Specifically, we conjecture that the key for human experts to learn from AI is to develop adequate boundary objects between AI and human experts. Tacit knowledge creation drives the knowledge integration between AI judgement and human expert judgement.

Recent literature from the stream of the Viable Systems Approach (vSa) highlighs the need to shift from the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to that of Intelligence Augmentation (IA) in complex decision making. IA is defined as an intelligence given by the integration and interaction between wise people and AI entities. More specifically, in the interpretative framework of the vSa Information Variety Model (IVM), IA qualifies the ability to approach a problem by changing the system’s Information Variety. To understand how this process occurs and its latent effects, it is useful to refer to the new interpretation of the vSa concept of relevance. Using this concept and the IVM, the paper illustrates how IA addresses the complexity of decision-making at the same time highlighting how interaction with AI determines a transformation of the structure and process of human thinking capability and how technology is becoming ever more critical for humans.

Nurse Schedule Problem (NSP) is the assignment of nurses to fulfill hospitals operational goal and regulations. The major aim of NSP is to minimize the total cost, maximizing nurse’s satisfaction, or maintain balanced distribution among preferable assignments and workloads. This paper is the preliminary research in development of NSP for a case of an operating room at a private hospital in Pathumthani, Thailand. An interview with the head nurse was conducted to capture insights and emerging issues that the head nurse wants to resolve. Then, a framework is proposed as a guideline for the development stochastic optimization model to tackle uncertainties in patients’ arrival and surgery duration which are the main concerns. This paper aims to serve as a fundamental stage for a further case based NSP development research.

A manual assembly has an important role in the manufacturing of products with small lot sizes and high variation. Becoming skilled manual labor requires knowledge transfers offered by human experts through a training process. To reduce the dependency of human experts, this paper introduces a framework called “Virtual Trainer” that incorporates the current state of the art marker-less RGB human pose estimation, activity detection for assembly step recognition, and training feedback through a multi-media presentation includes score evaluation and semantic description of trainee performance. Furthermore, the detailed transcript of each step and 3-D visualization compares to ideal movements also presented. The experimental design for evaluating the effectiveness and hypothesis is given.

A large number of remote sensing technologies for disaster management have been made, they still need a time to be accepted in disaster management framework of local governments. Before considering the application, it is necessary to discuss the practicality of remote sensing techniques in the existing disaster management frameworks. Towards the application of remote sensing technologies for decision making during natural disasters, this study addresses the following research questions; Which decision making of local governments can the remote sensing technology assist during natural disasters? And, what kind of remote sensing technologies can be applied? To solve these research questions, this study analyzed the regional disaster response plans of local governments in Japan, and discussed the practicality of the remote sensing technologies to the decision makings of disaster management operations.

The lead author has in this decade been studying the processes of creating and transferring multinational IT service knowledge among the headquarters of a global IT Service firm in Japan and the firm’s local subsidiaries in China and APAC regions. Key findings of the preceding studies are, (1) the average of Project Managers’ skill level in China and APAC regions has already reached to the global average determined in the standardized PM skill assessment within the global firm. (2) IT service project managers’ value systems are highly influenced by those of organization the PMs belong to, and the value systems vary not only by nations but also by industries. (3) To transfer knowledge from HQ to overseas subsidiaries in China and APAC regions, especially in the case that the knowledge to be transferred is extremely new and unfamiliar to the knowledge transferees (i.e., local PMs), it is better for the knowledge transferrers from HQs to consider the differences between the value systems of the transferrer and the transferee.In this paper, the author describes the case-studies with interviews of service project managers in the IT service, aerospace, and construction industries who could use or avoid AI to use for their own projects and have opinions on the AI technology for them. And the author’s objective is to distinguish the applicable and non-applicable AI functions for professional service managers by evaluating the comments of the service project managers. Also, assuming similarity of the knowledge-creating process among project managers in a multinational environment to the process among human PMs and AIs, as the teaming with unfamiliar partners, the author introduced an extended SECI model to explain the needs for considering the sub-process to connect the major four processes in between “Ba”, the knowledge creating field in the SECI model. And referring to the updated technological information, the author considers the possible further research.

Today, many companies are adapting their strategy, business models, products, services as well as business processes and information systems in order to expand their digitalization level through intelligent systems and services. The paper raises an important question: What are cognitive co-creation mechanisms for extending digital services and architectures to readjust the usage value of smart services? Typically, extensions of digital services and products and their architectures are manual design tasks that are complex and require specialized, rare experts. The current publication explores the basic idea of extending specific digital artifacts, such as intelligent service architectures, through mechanisms of cognitive co-creation to enable a rapid evolutionary path and better integration of humans and intelligent systems. We explore the development of intelligent service architectures through a combined, iterative, and permanent task of co-creation between humans and intelligent systems as part of a new concept of cognitively adapted smart services. In this paper, we present components of a new platform for the joint co-creation of cognitive services for an ecosystem of intelligent services that enables the adaptation of digital services and architectures.

The European Union’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD 2) aims at opening up the market for payment services in the EU. Banks are required to grant other providers access to their customers’ payment account data in order to stimulate competition, facilitate the development of new, innovative offerings and allow customers to ‘shop around’ for better-value, more personalised services. While billed as a major win for customers the regulatory approach of PSD 2 is informed almost exclusively by competition law and supply-side concerns as they take precedence over customers’ and public interest considerations, such as data protection and privacy. In an environment that is increasingly dominated by large digital platforms this may prove to be a costly mistake.

In the Smart Cities, there are several research streams, one of them is represented by the application of service dominant logic and science engineering, which usually identifies different layers in the Smart City depending on their value propositions. Between the layer of IT services and the actual services provided by the city, we found that there is an uncertainty regarding how the city services can be designed and adapted in different contexts. This may be caused by the lack of systematic management and comprehensive overview of the city data such as open data in the city. Therefore, this paper proposes to analyze the multi-contextual environment of Smart Cities and uses the data as an essential source for the key decisions in the city development and service design. It also outlines the process to support such a solution and achieve a sustainable and resilient city.

The rapid pace of technology and innovation in the world has required continuous improvements in the preparation of civil engineers. In 2004, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) identified ten essential attributes as critical to the future success and relevance of the engineering profession. This paper examines how civil engineering undergraduates’ achievement of eight of the NAE’s ten Engineer of 2020 (E2020) attributes is impacted by participating in different types of activities outside the classroom. Responses from a survey of 284 civil engineering undergraduates across 23 U.S. institutions were analyzed to explore the link between reported out-of-class activities and perceived outcomes. The overall results indicated that civil engineering undergraduates identified fraternity and sorority membership as a major influencer. This paper provides civil engineering educators and students a broad view of potential student outcomes from activities beyond the in-class curriculum.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of two case studies currently conducted in Austria and Estonia on the empowerment of mobile youth in the European Union, i.e. citizens from other EU member states aged 16 to 29 who are resident in Austria and Estonia. The case studies are actions within the framework of a two-year project funded by the European Union (Empowerment of European Mobile Youth - EMY). The project’s principal objective is to identify opportunities and barriers for the democratic and social engagement of mobile youth in these two countries. More specifically, the two case studies aim to (1) explore how young EU citizens experience the exercise of their EU citizenship rights in their host country and (2) identify requirements for a practical web-based tool to facilitate their engagement in the political live in their host country. This tool should potentially be transferable to other EU member states.