Design, Operation and Evaluation of Mobile Communications

The interaction and awareness services play a key role on the impact that mobile collaborative systems have on their application domains. Identifying these services at early design stages is not only challenging, but also mandatory to determine the feasibility and scope of the system to be developed. Based on a literature review, this paper presents a set of interaction and awareness services that helps designers determine what services to embed into mobile applications, depending on interaction needs that must be addressed.

To solve the problems of the traditional classroom-based dragon boat race teaching, such as the lack of venues, facilities and experienced instructors, as well as the loose course design, etc., this paper proposes a web-based teaching system that applies the virtual simulation technology. Based on the theoretical and practical knowledge of the dragon boat race, this paper has found the specific information-based teaching methods that are useful for teaching this sport, with the hope to enhance the experiences and outcomes of teaching and training.

Sports intangible cultural heritage is an important part of China’s excellent traditional culture, and it can strengthen the development of sports culture and promote its prosperity. As an art with the characteristics of the Chinese nation and the continuation of the red revolutionary culture, Ansai waist drum has the reputation of “the first drum in the world”, “victory waist drum” and “the soul drum of the Chinese nation”. The Ansai waist drum was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, which made the Ansai waist drum once again enter the public eye. In order to better inherit and develop Ansai waist drum, which is an excellent sports culture of the Chinese nation, this paper aims to explore the application of AR technology to promote the spread of Ansai waist drum. While introducing AR technology and Ansai waist drum, this paper analyzes the role of AR technology in promoting the excellent sports culture of the Chinese nation, summarizes the advantages of AR technology in promoting the spread of Ansai waist drum, and proposes strategies for AR technology to accelerate the promotion of Ansai waist drum. It is hoped that AR technology can better advance the efficient popularization of a series of Chinese excellent sports culture such as Ansai waist drum.

Under the circumstance of continuous variation of COVID-19 virus, verified the temporariness of the vaccines made by various countries. One cannot expect permanent protection by accepting only one dose of vaccine. In order to prepare and respond to the pandemic, many countries are applying different strategies to increase vaccination rates. The WHO appeals to the world to take the vaccine booster shot for community immunity. Relevant authorities then have to provide and spread visual health messages on the booster shot to keep the public informed. This study examine how unofficial organizations can guide and persuade people to adopt relevant health actions more effectively (such as continuous vaccination) by introducing emoji with different emotional valences in different message framing. An online experiment adopted a 2 (emoji: positive versus negative) × 2 (message framing: gain framing versus loss framing) design to investigate the effects of contrary emoji on people’s self-efficacy to continuously take the booster shot. In total of 240 university students were recruited to participate in this study. Within two types of message framing, the experiment simulated 4 pieces of health messages on the COVID-19 booster shot released by an unofficial organization, together with emoji of two emotional valences. The results showed that health messages with negative emoji result in stronger self-efficacy to user. Moreover, there is an interaction effect between emoji and message framing on self-efficacy. This study is intended to provide meaningful insights for health communicators, visual designers and health practitioners concerned.

Various applications related to mental health continue to appear and constantly innovative psychological applications or the use of traditional relaxation methods combined with technology have become new choices in people’s busy lives. In recent years, the rate of adolescents suffering from mental illnesses such as depression and suicide has been increasing. Adolescents in this age group do not have good stress management skills. This research paper is to design and develop a suitable decompression application with a combination of the diary as expressive writing and music. The objective of the paper was to study and explore the impact of expressive writing and music on stress. Then determine suitable music and color for the application with the use of the quantitative method. Design and develop the application which meets the objective and aim and evaluate the application based on users’ experiences.

The use of technology in supporting business processes has become an integral part of business in the post-pandemic era. This study focuses on two aspects of technology which are digitization and digitalization of business processes in tourism industry in Malaysia. Due to movement constraints in Covid-19 pandemic, most of the related studies are conducted based on media report, peered review articles and research letters or empirical articles. There is a lack of case study to examine the effectiveness of various factors and how these factors impact the recovery of the post- pandemic tourism industry. A research case in earlier study implies that digitization and digitalization have an impact in recovery of tourism industry and insight gained motivates this study on effectiveness of smart tourism in Malaysia. Hence, this study aims to investigate effectiveness of smart tourism by using a self-developed mobile application which enables multiple trips organize in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Test cases are conducted among eleven managers in travel agencies and positive feedback are collected on system quality, perceived mobility, mobile usefulness, mobile ease of use and usage intention. Findings show that ICT has a major role in reviving business processes when tourism enters recovery phase. The study also discovered the importance of understanding the new patterns emerging which may include new tour packages or travel destinations that are emerging in future. In future work, artificial intelligence or machine learning based smart tourism models are introduced to analyse the new pattern emerging.

Immunization against infectious diseases is a lifelong engagement requiring proper record management. In recent times, following the outbreak of COVID-19, it has become imperative that immunization records done locally should be accessible as substantial accessible proof internationally, anywhere, anytime and for future use. Apart from the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID), an initiative of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, that schedules and captures individual’s data for COVID-19 vaccination, the management of other Routine Immunization records in Nigeria is presently done manually with each immunized individual given an immunization card as proof of immunization, and for follow up on other doses of the vaccine. This method is not without its plethora of challenges. Leveraging mobile health solutions, especially one that places the individual at the centre will benefit the management of the immunization process in Nigeria. There have been a few mobile solution initiatives in Nigeria to address issues associated with managing the immunization process, but they have been fragmentary and have suffered setbacks. This study takes a holistic approach to the management of immunization and proposes a mobile healthcare technology framework using USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), Short Message Service (SMS) and Mobile Application (Mobile App) towards the implementation of a versatile Mobile Health Solution for the management of immunization in Nigeria. Existing works of literature were reviewed, and interviews conducted amongst health workers and mobile developers. This framework serves as a launchpad for future mobile system Implementation that will continuously enforce scheduled vaccines, provide accurate population immunization coverage data, and combat vaccine hesitancy through effective communication and community engagement approaches.

This article targets one of the fundamental changes in the judicial system induced by the severe limitations due to the absence of face-to-face meetings: the application of video conferencing in court sessions, an application with special requirements in this critical domain. A semi-structured literature review that we conducted revealed a lack of human-centered approaches. Potentials and challenges, mainly focused on the needs of judges, were also identified. These challenges were then transformed into requirements for designs of video conferencing systems in the judicial context. We ultimately developed a low-fidelity prototype of a system that incorporates a novel combination of three use-case-specific features: a solution to manage fatigue, a solution to manage user participation, and cognitive aid based on artificial intelligence (AI). The aim of the last feature was to reduce cognitive load while improving the moderation quality of court session leaders. Through a heuristic evaluation by human-computer interaction (HCI) and domain experts, the benefits of the basic design ideas, as well as potential areas for improvement, were identified. This paper presents the first systematic analyses of the potentials and limitations of video conferencing in German court sessions. It brings the enormous challenges of a critical domain in society, as well as human-centered and value-sensitive digitalization and AI adoption, under the spotlight.

Karaoke is an important part of human music and entertainment nowadays. Facing the continuous development of Internet technology, the traditional offline KTV industry has been devastated by the impact of the global new crown epidemic, and the malpractice of online K-song platform development model is becoming more and more severe. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of online and offline karaoke service are studied, and the virtual reality technology is combined to develop the virtual karaoke bar system design based on the metauniverse. The scene design and function mapping of the system are given. In the following research, the system will be further studied, extended and applied.

The purpose of this study is to investigate factors that influence learners’ intention towards accepting online learning tools before and after Covid pandemic in different learning environments. A total of 350 sample collected prior to Covid pandemic in Malaysia whereas 627 sample collected at post Covid pandemic in China. UTAUT model and TAM served as the frameworks whereas PLS-SEM was used for data analysis. The findings disclosed that both Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy have positive relationship with students’ Behavioral Intention of accepting online learning tools in the Malaysia’s study before Covid pandemic under the blended learning environment. However, the effect size (f2) of Performance Expectancy is small (f2 = 0.020), and Effort Expectancy has no effect (f2 = 0.015) in predicting Behavioral Intention in adopting online learning tools. While comparing to another similar study conducted in China after covid pandemic in the mobile learning environment, Performance Expectancy (perceived usefulness) has large effect size (f2 = 0.403), and Effort Expectancy (ease of use) has medium effect size (f2 = 0.241) on students’ adoption of online learning technologies. By comparing results of the two studies, the effect size of Performance Expectancy increased from small to large effect, while Effort Expectancy increased from no effect to medium effect. This shows that the widespread of Covid pandemic has impacted the learning approaches in education institutions likewise the perception of students towards technology acceptance. Importance-performance matrix analysis was used as a post-hoc procedure to measure the importance and performance of the exogenous constructs for both studies.

Despite the huge growth potential that has been predicted for mobile game continuous usage intention, little is known about what motives users to be sticky under the mobile game context. Drawing on the Uses and Gratifications theory (UGT), this study aims to investigate the influencing effects of players’ characteristics and the mobile game structures on players’ mobile game behavior (e.g. stickiness). After surveying 439 samples, the research model is tested with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that both individual gratifications and mobile game presence positively affect users’ stickiness. Furthermore, we find that leisure boredom of individual situations and integration of mobile game governance positively affect users’ stickiness. The results provide further insights into the design and governance strategies of mobile games.

With the popularization of the concept of comprehensive quality management in Chinese enterprises, more and more enterprises begin to realize that doing a good job in quality management needs to start from the source. The design and development stage is an important process for the formation and finalization of product quality, and the quality management work at this stage is crucial to determine the product quality level.With digital mobile communication products as the research background, this paper summarizes the international methodology of product design and development process, such as ISO9001 international quality management system, advanced product quality planning (APQP), project management knowledge system (PMBOK), door diameter management system (SGS), integrated product development (IPD) and product lifecycle management (PLM), etc. Through a systematic summary and research on the quality management method of the above design and development process, the quality maturity evaluation index system is constructed. Help the product to carry out quantitative product development quality maturity evaluation in the concept definition stage, sample verification stage, pilot test confirmation stage, small batch climbing stage and mass production stage of the design and production process.Through the product maturity evaluation system, the quality maturity status of the product design and development process can be easily measured, so that the project stakeholders can have clear objectives and risk management for each process of the product design and development. Easy solve the opacity of quality management and problem exposure lag in the design development process, so that the design quality is well prevented in advance.

AI-based applications (apps) have presented tremendous ethical challenges such as AI biases and privacy breaches, leading to the issue of privacy paradox. The paradox is more salient for dating apps than ordinary shopping apps, as data breaches in dating apps could relate to users’ close social circles such as families and colleagues, suggesting more serious ethical and even legal consequences. Given the limited attention to user’ arousal-ethics paradox, we developed and empirically examined a conceptual framework regarding how the arousing benefits of dating apps, users’ ethical misgivings, users’ perceived autonomy and perceived risks collectively affect their adoption of dating apps. Survey data from 319 construction workers confirmed that arousing benefits are associated with users’ perceived autonomy, which leads to dating apps adoption. In contrast, users’ ethical misgivings, associated with perceived risks, are negatively related to dating app adoption. This study contributes to the interdisciplinary field of privacy paradox that involves big data, artificial intelligence, user experience, and ethics by examining ethical consumption and practical suggestions to AI-based dating app developers.

Smartphone usage had often been measured using self-reported time estimates. Due to the limitations of such self-reports (e.g., effects of social desirability or limited memory performance), this type of measurement had often been criticized. Users tended to overestimate or underestimate their screen time. The goal of the current study was to examine the accuracy of estimated screen time, identify predictors of this accuracy and explore the impact of accuracy feedback on users’ well-being and their motivation to limit future smartphone use. In an online survey N = 153 participants (68.6% female) were asked about their well-being, mindfulness, motivation for future limitations of smartphone use and to estimate their smartphone screen time. Moreover, objective screen time was measured with the help of built-in applications: Digital Wellbeing (Android) and Screen Time (iOS). The analyses showed that significantly more subjects underestimated themselves than overestimated themselves. After being provided with feedback on the accuracy of their screen time estimations, participants reported their well-being and their motivation for smartphone limitation, again. Results showed that objective screen time, compulsive phone use and mindfulness did not predict the accuracy of screen time estimations. Feedback on estimation accuracy did not affect limitation motivation but (partially) well-being. The perceived impact of Covid-19 pandemic significantly affected both well-being and limitation motivation. The present paper interprets and relates the results to research in this area and derives implications for future research.

Humans can interact via the user interfaces is an information system. Traditional student-centered learning software often has a similar user interface via which the student can engage with the software, and the information is provided in a consistently identical manner to all users, regardless of personality type or learning style. The effectiveness of applications relies on the end user’s acceptance. This study investigates the viability of incorporating human personality types in user interface designs in order to have systems that are more usable by all personality types of people. The primary research question concerns whether a user interface designed for a given personality type provides for better learning engagement. This study uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to classify students’ personality types, then links these personality types to specific user interface features to see if a user interface tailored to their learning preferences improves learning. The general concept of this study is that the experimental group is given a set of user interfaces tailored to their personality types. In the control group, participants are provided with a general user interface. A semi-structured interview was conducted, and the promising results show that the engagement and acceptance of the designed user interfaces for the respective human personality groups.

Although wearable devices have high potential in the emerging scenarios, these scenarios face many security and privacy challenges. It is because of the inherent openness of wearable devices limitation of the network, terminal resource and the technology. This brings a lot of obstacles to design of security and privacy protection solutions in wearable device and network. However traditional security and privacy protection method do not fit in these emerging scenarios. Security and privacy issues have gradually become a huge challenge for emerging wearable device applications. Therefore, the design of application security and privacy protection scheme of wearable devices has been widely concerned and focused by academia and industry.

The traditional trust adoption problem data comes from the questionnaire survey. The accuracy and objectivity are not high, and the practical application value is limited. The output of the research is usually the subjective factors affecting trust, and the deep reasons for low user trust are not deeply explored. This study aims to propose a new set of consumer wearable service quality trust integration model based on big data, deeply integrate the two different research fields of big data mining and trust adoption, and quantitatively describe how wearable service quality characteristics, privacy environment, business characteristics, personality characteristics and other factors affect consumers’ trust and adoption of wearable services.

The growth of Internet and social media have substantially changed how customers engage, interact, and communicate with brands and marketers. Individuals with strong personal appeal and influence play a key role in facilitating greater brand outreach and better performance of online ads. Influencers convey similar or distinct persona to match different atmosphere of social media platforms and types of products and services that they intend to promote. Simultaneously, influencers constantly produce textual and visual narrations of their lives and experiences to enhance consumer trusts and foster consumer responses. However, little is known about the role of influencer personal image establishment on driving online consumer engagement. Besides, there are lack of researches that consider the consolidated effect of influencer persona and narratives during the persuasion process. Instagram, Facebook, Sina Weibo and Twitter have been the most examined social media platforms. However, short video-based social media platforms such as TikTok that embed distinct product and content structures still lack academic attention. In light of the significant role of influencers on consumer attitudes and behaviors, and as this research domain is still developing, a research from a new research perspective is needed. This study derives practical implications across various domains, such as social media marketing, digital advertising, and video advertisement in which identification of key factors of information propagators is essential. Taken together, the findings highlight the critical interplay of influencer persona, expressions of the posts and consumer psychological factors in driving consumer engagement and purchase intention, especially for short-form video-based ads.

This paper provides an overview of the literature on the use of social media advertising (SMA) and the key factors that affect the effectiveness of SMA. A total of 92 manuscripts published in top ranking journals in the last decade are reviewed. At the firm level, factors, such as brand’s social role, time to post on social media platforms, frequency of social media posts, and genre of the posts, are found to affect consumer’s purchasing decision and intention to share. At the individual consumer level, factors including demographic characteristics, general attitude toward online advertising, and privacy concerns are found to influence consumer’s buying behaviors.

Understanding the marketing mixed strategy with internet Key Opinion Leader (KOL) marketing in online brand community has remained a challenge for both academics and practitioners. Previous studies have explored different characteristics of KOL and their impact on customer purchase attentions. Contributing to this stream of the literature, our study explores the direct effect of KOL activeness and influence characteristics on customer online education real purchases as well as the mediating effect of sales discount and mobile advertising on such effect. Using real online education community individual transaction data collected from May to the end of August 2019 with the sample size of 29070 transactions. Our study shows that both high degree of activeness and influence level of KOL has a direct effect on online user’s real purchase amounts and purchase times. And such effect can be mediated through sales discount and mobile advertising. The results have great implications to guide firms in terms of their marketing strategies in maximizing the return on investment in sales discount, mobile advertising and KOL marketing.

When social media facilitates social commerce to cross borders, international customers encounter unexpected challenges due to cultural novelties. How environmental factors influence customers’ trust and their engagement in cross-cultural social commerce operations remains under-investigated because social media usage does not necessarily generate customers’ engagement in social commerce. Based on the S-O-R paradigm, a large scale of 2058 samples from 135 countries were surveyed to examine the proposed research model. The regression analysis results explicate the mechanism whereby two dimensions of social media usage, informational and socializing, exert impacts on customers’ trust toward social commerce and final engagement. Further, cultural distance has been identified as a deterring environmental factor negatively influencing customers’ engagement in cross-cultural social commerce environment. Both theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Previous studies argued that seller competition has both stimulating and crowding-out effects on products on the platform. These two seemingly contradictory views were rarely examined from time series analysis. Considering the characteristics of network effects over time, the dynamic effect of seller competition and product abundance is decomposed based on the time effect from the short-term and long-term perspective. By collecting detailed information on travel products from Ctrip.com, the panel vector autoregression model is specified to empirically test the hypotheses. The results show that seller competition has a positive effect on product abundance in the short time (one-period lagged). Seller competition does not affect product abundance in the long time (twenty-period lagged) as the two countervailing network effects (i.e., positive and negative network effects) cancel each other out. Our study provides empirical evidence for the dynamic nature of network effects over time. Moreover, our findings offer crucial managerial implications for platforms and sellers to choose effective competitive strategies.

Live streaming e-commerce is becoming prevalent and its new business model attracts much attention from the marketing and information systems fields. In this paper, we examine the relationships between influencers and the role of mega-influencers on the live streaming e-commerce platform. Based on a large-scale dataset and a natural experiment, we explore how influencers’ performance is affected and how the audiences’ visits and purchases change for other influencers when mega influencers leave the platform. We find that there exist two significant effects from mega influencers, including a signaling effect and a drainage effect. When mega influencers left the live streaming platform, the audiences’ visits for other influencers significantly decrease, suggesting that there exists a significant drainage effect on audiences’ visits from mega influencers. There is a significant number of audiences’ visits coming from mega influencers to other influencers. When mega influencers leave from the platform, the sales for other influencers also significantly decrease with the controlled audiences’ visits, showing a significant signaling effect from mega influencers. Our paper illustrates that the treatment effects of mega influencers continuously affected other influencers. Based on a causal forest approach, we show that there exist heterogeneously treatment effects across influencers. The influencers with a large number of followers are affected more than the influencers with a small number of followers.

The emergence of livestreaming commerce has become more prevalent especially during the pandemic period. This present study attempts to reveal Chinese consumers purchase intention for agricultural products via livestreaming platforms. For this purpose, the Theory of Planned Behavior is applied to reveal the influence of Chinese consumers’ subjective norm, attitudes, s and perceived planning behaviors on their purchase intentions when buying agricultural products through livestreaming platforms. The researchers designed an online survey from January to April 2020 in China. Convenient sampling was applied to collect 517 questionnaires from the respondents who have no experience in buying agricultural products from livestreaming platforms. After data cleaning, 400 sets of questionnaires were valid to use. Structural Equation Model was applied to analyze the relationship among the variables. The findings indicated that the path from subjective norm (β = .554, p < .001), attitude (β = .314, p < .001) and perceived behavioral control (β = .139, p < .05) significantly affect consumers’ intention to buy agricultural products from livestreaming platforms.

Virtual character technology is developing rapidly and is replacing human participation in social division of labor in many fields, such as online education, human customer service, marketing activities, etc. Among them, virtual influencer marketing has gradually become a popular phenomenon, and has been widely adopted among major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. However, due to some long-standing user biases towards computer services, especially compared to human service providers, it is widely believed that computer service providers are lack of ability. As a type of computer product, virtual influencers are highly anthropomorphic in terms of appearance, voice, identity, interaction, etc. Among them, the realistic appearance is an important feature of virtual influencers, which may be an important factor affecting users’ perception of their abilities, which in turn affect the advertising effectiveness. On the other hand, the controlling entity of virtual influencer is generally human or computer, that is, virtual influencer’s behavior is generally manipulated by human or computer. Past studies suggest that the controlling entity are also an important factor affecting user attitudes.Does appearance realism affect virtual influencer perception? What can we do to improve user attitudes towards virtual influencer advertisements? Is there an interaction effect between the virtual influencer’s appearance realism level and the type of controlling entity? Or, how does the virtual influencer’s level of appearance realism and the type of controlling entity match make the advertisement attitude better? We intend to conduct a 2 (appearance realism: high/low) × 2 (controlling entity type: computer/human) between-group experiments. The expected result are: tunder a high level of appearance realism, the effect of computer controlling entity is better than that of human-controlling entity. The reason is that high-level appearance realism improves the user’s ability to perceive virtual idols. The ability expectations of virtual influencers reduce perceived ability and thus advertisement attitude. We will further examine the moderating effect of product types. For search products, the effect of using computer controlling entity for virtual idols with a high-level appearance realism is enhanced, the advertisement attitude should be stronger; for experience products, human entity should perform better in advertising regardless high or low appearance realism.

Intelligent voice assistants (IVA) are on the rise: They are implemented into new smart mobile and stationary devices such as smartphones, smart watches, tablets, cars, and smart speakers. Being surrounded by always-on microphones, however, can be perceived as a threat to one’s privacy since audio recordings are saved in the cloud and processed for e.g., marketing purposes. However, only a minority of users adapts their user behavior such as self-disclosure according to their privacy concerns. Research has attempted to find answers for this paradoxical outcome through concepts such as the privacy calculus or the privacy cynicism. Moreover, literature revealed that a large group of users lacks privacy awareness and privacy literacy preventing them from engaging in privacy-preserving behavior. Since previous studies in the scope of IVAs focused primarily on interviews or cross-sectional studies testing models predicting user behavior, desiderata for elevating future research are presented. This leads to a more user-centric approach incorporating e.g., a motivational-affective perspective and investigation of causalities.

An integrative perspective is developed on memory performance in the context of voice-based conversational agents (VCAs). Memory, as an outcome of human-technology interaction, matters where technology is designed to enhance knowledge and to function as a cognitive support tool and aide. To date, this has meant focusing on the evaluation of specialist applications such as assistive and educational technologies. The increased use of VCAs in everyday life, in the form of smart speakers or as assistants for mobile phones, however, makes effects on memory more relevant to a large user base. Adding VCAs to multi-functional devices such as smartphones increases their potential to be taken as digital companions and to make interactions with them more meaningful. This has implications for different types of memory, semantic and episodic/autobiographical. Since memory is not stable, but malleable and context-dependent, its performance is likely to be influenced by the wide range of social cues that VCAs can convey. Further, VCAs can be expected to contribute to conversational engagement, the general state of involvement in a conversational setting, which in turn influences cognitive outcomes.

WeChat guide system is widely applied for events and activities in exhibition venues. This paper firstly defines WeChat guide system in exhibition venues. Then, two surveys concerning Xiamen International Conference and Exhibition Center are conducted with the methods of interview and questionnaire in order to explore the current situation of guide service in exhibition venues. Based on the elements of user experience and the survey results, product positioning, feasibility evaluation, users’ demand and key technologies of WeChat guide system are analyzed. In the designing process, we focus on system visual design and system framework design (i.e., User Interface and Admin Zone) for WeChat guide system, taking Xiamen International Conference and Exhibition Center as the example. The design of WeChat guide system in exhibition venues contributes to promoting efficient operation and intelligent management in Smart MICE industry.

In order to relax in everyday life, people use music from a sound carrier. The choice of music is made intuitively and according to one’s musical preference. In a therapeutic context, these processes are professionally guided. In so-called receptive music therapy, the patient and therapist listen to music together.The psychological processes triggered by this (e.g. imaginations, memories) are worked through in therapeutic conversation. But professional music therapy is not always feasible, as getting an appointment could take some time, the need for receptive music therapy is urgent at the time the treatment is not available, etc. Furthermore, voice assistants are increasingly dominating everyday life and represent an easy way to perform various tasks with minimal effort. The areas of application for voice assistants are diverse and range from answering simple information questions to processing complex topics and controlling various tasks.Given these considerations of the wide availability and ease of use, a pilot study was designed to combine the effective approaches of music therapy with modern voice assistants. The study entails one interaction with an Alexa Skill allowing a music-imaginative journey in an interactive manner, and a control condition without interactive parts using a CD.21 participants took part in the study, of which first analyses are presented in the paper. Especially results regarding the analyses of the user experience (AttrakDiff and meCUE) as well as a discussion of the subjective participants’ reflections on the interaction regarding the limitations of commercial voice assistants are presented

Stereotypes and scripts guide human perception and expectations in everyday life. Research has found that a robot’s appearance influences the perceived fit in different application domains (e.g. industrial or social) and that the role a robot is presented in predicts its perceived personality. However, it is unclear how the surroundings as such can elicit a halo effect leading to stereotypical perceptions. This paper presents the results of an experimental study in which 206 participants saw 8 cartoon pictures of the robot Pepper in different application domains in a within-subjects online study. Results indicate that the environment a robot is placed in has an effect on the users’ evaluation of the robot’s warmth, competence, status in society, competition, anthropomorphism, and morality. As the first impression has an effect on users’ expectations and evaluation of the robot and the interaction with it, the effect of the application scenarios has to be considered carefully.

One of the major diseases that affect the elderly is the Alzheimer disease (AD) which is characterized by partial or complete loss of memory. Early detection and early treatment could help in managing the Alzheimer disease on potential patients. This paper introduces a virtual reality assistant (VRA) into a virtual environment. The VRA gives commands to the user through a wearable immersive virtual reality Google. The patients are made to complete varying levels of tasks of which a deviation from the normal results of the task was an indicator of a potential sufferer of the AD. The VR used Natural Language in Artificial Intelligence for communicating, the tasks were designed with Unity Game Engine and VR cardboard Google was used. The result obtained showed that patients found the Virtual Reality Assistant in the simulation helpful.

This article presents a self-adaptive rectenna for RF energy harvesting applications. The receiving antenna is a slotted rectangular patch antenna with partial ground plane for operating at 2.45 GHz (IEEE 802.11 b&g). The amount of received power by the antenna depends mainly on the type of harvesting, either ambient or dedicated RF energy harvesting situation. As a consequence, a rectifier circuit is designed with two input parallel paths in order to have the ability to operate at both low and high input power levels. The automatic power distribution scenario is utilized in order to maintain high radio frequency-direct current (RF-DC) power conversion efficiency (PCE) over a wide range of RF input power. The complete rectenna is simulated taking into account the mismatch in both antenna and rectifier sections. The PCE of the proposed rectenna is kept above 50% over 30 dBm of RF input power (from −6.3 dBm to 23.7 dBm).

In an attempt to curtail and prevent the spread of Covid-19 infection, social distancing has been adopted globally as a precautionary measure. Statistics shows that 75% of appointments most especially in the health sector are being handled by telephone since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently most patients access health care services in real time from any part of the World through the use of Mobile devices. With an exponential growth of mobile applications and cloud computing the concept of mobile cloud computing is becoming a future platform for different forms of services for smartphones hence the challenges of low battery life, storage space, mobility, scalability, bandwidth, protection and privacy on mobile devices has being improved by combining mobile devices and cloud computing which rely on wireless networks to create a new concept and infrastructure called Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC). The introduction of Mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been identified as a promising approach to enhance healthcare services, with the advent of cloud computing, computing as a utility has become a reality thus a patient only pays for what he uses. This paper, presents a systematic review on the concept of cloud computing in mobile Environment; Mobile Payments and Mobile Healthcare Solutions in various healthcare applications, it describes the principles, challenges and opportunity this concept proffers to the health sector to determine how it can be harnessed is also discussed.

The process of bridging the gap between reality and virtual data has been possible through exponential technologies such as Mixed Reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). MR has so far proffered numerous advantages ranging from communication, navigation, medical aid, data modelling, visualization, and education to remote accessibility across diverse platforms. This paper proposes a systematic framework for knowledge acquisition and synthesis through MR based constructivism learning theory. The methodology uses a bottom-up approach and is based upon the Dryfus modelling. The existing drawbacks of poor learning retention, interactive knowledge acquisition and synthesis are addressed based upon MR technology. The framework provides the basis for embedding MR technology into analyzing and enabling human practical knowledge, as well as extending the scope for knowledge acquisition to rediscover the learning process in educational environments. Furthermore, existing MR based solutions for learning theories are reviewed. The validation of the proposed framework is carried out using technology acceptance model. The real-time knowledge acquisition device embedded with MR technology is explored and enhanced to demonstrate the accuracy and efficacy of the proposed framework.

The infrastructures deployed by classical telecommunications operators are appropriate and cost-effective for urban-oriented business models, but rural areas with very low population density require alternatives both in terms of the technology used and in business models. New generation networks become more and more dense and heterogeneous, increasing the gap as operators cannot spend the required CAPEX and OPEX in sparsely populated areas where the revenues will certainly be very low.At the same time, an increasing number of communities worldwide provide themselves networking solutions, which is becoming a global alternative movement called “community networks”. However, rural areas are challenging because of the technical difficulties of getting connected to the world and the scarcity of technical skills, among other reasons. Other stakeholders such as municipalities or regional governments are also relevant actors but cannot provide a solution by themselves.Partnerships between different actors for deploying rural connectivity could be the answer, taking advantage somehow of the “shared infrastructure model” proposed in IETF RFC7962. This paper analyses the relationship between different stakeholders and the main elements to consider when deploying mobile communications services in isolated and sparsely populated regions. The analysis uses a case study from the Napo River Network in Peru and compares it with other experiences such as Zenzeleni Networks in South Africa or Rizhomatica in Mexico.

A single layer microstrip diode rectifier circuit with a flexible thin film schottky diode is proposed. A compact half wave rectifier with a shunt-diode configuration is designed and implemented using off-shelf SMS-7630 low barrier Schottky diode tuned for a centre frequency of 10 GHz and fabricated one using 0.81 mm Rogers (RO4003c) substrate. The rectifier circuit with the commercial diode has a maximum conversion efficiency of 41% with 300 Ω load resistance. Al-doped-ZnO (AZO) semiconductor nanoparticle ink is used to fabricate a flexible thin film Schottky diode (TFSD). The proposed TFSD device consists of 3 layers, Ag/AZO/Cu and fabricated by deposition of a thin film of nanoparticle-ink AZO on a flexible copper tape substrate then applying an Ag electrode on the AZO to obtain the Schottky barrier diode with an active area of 1 mm2. Measurements shows that the 280 nm thickness device has the maximum forward current density up to 0.28 A/cm2 at 2 V. Also the measurements show that proposed rectifier has a maximum conversion efficiency 35% with 300 Ω load resistance which is smaller than that of the commercial diode because of the commercial diode is more conductive than the proposed thin film schottky diode. The overall size of the two rectifiers is 13.3 × 8.2 mm2. The rectifier is simulated using an electromagnetic simulator with good agreement for both simulation and measurements.

This study compares three selected navigation applications which are Google Maps, Waze and HERE WeGo, through the study of each application’s Application Programming Interface (API). The study is focusing on the aspect of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) accuracy, in an attempt to determine which API are suitable to be integrated and implemented in the development of a shuttle bus application. To date, there are currently lacking studies that discuss or compare the implementation of API in the development of shuttle bus tracking and ETA application. This study focuses on finding which API is the best suitable for such development from an ETA perspective, using the navigation application where the APIs were implemented or based on as a tool of testing. An experiment was conducted in a city in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by collecting the ETA of the navigation applications from multiple points while riding a scheduled shuttle bus. The ETA will be compared with actual arrival time (ATA) using RMSE, MAE and PE metric. Comparison results showed Google Maps app provides the most consistent ETA prediction accuracy in a conservative manner and is the most suitable to be incorporated into a simple bus tracking and ETA app. The significant contribution of this study is to provide a result of comparison of the ETA accuracy through selected navigation applications and comparison of their navigation API.

A novel multi-band planar 2 × 2 array loop antenna, with a frequency ranging from 0.5–4.5 GHz for energy harvesting applications is presented. The proposed loop antenna consists of an external strip loop and an internal banana strip connected to the external strip loop. The loop antenna occupies a small size of 62 × 38 mm2, while the total area of the suggested array antenna is 164  × 80 mm2. A prototype of the proposed 2 × 2 array antenna is fabricated, measured, and the results including return loss, efficiency, and gain, are obtained, and characterized. Therefore, excellent agreement was found between the measured and simulated results.

This paper investigates two distinct yet potentially complementary issues that when put together, may be able to solve each other. First, businesses are pressured to roll out innovative products to stay ahead of the competition, but product innovation is risky as it can sometimes violate consumer expectations due to schema incongruity. Second, while augmented reality (AR) technology has been examined in adoption studies in retail and advertising, and in practice, we have seen the occasional application of AR in marketing campaigns, AR remains a blackbox, in that both researchers and practitioners have little understanding of how the unique AR attributes can be maximised as well as in what contexts. Our study brings these two dilemmas together by examining how AR product presentations can be designed to improve consumer evaluations of innovative, yet schema-incongruent products. We propose the design of a field experiment that leverages two key attributes of AR, namely the superimposition of virtual items into real-life environments and the controllability of these virtual items. We propose to investigate how the styles of the virtual items (cartoon vs. realistic) and the levels of controllability (with control vs. without control) within an AR product presentation can facilitate incongruity resolution for schema-incongruent products, which could lead to positive product evaluations and behavioural intentions. We anticipate the findings of our experiment to provide novel insights into cognitive processes pertaining to the use of AR and to provide practical implications for the design of AR for incongruity resolution.