Titulo Estágio
MESMERIC: Modeling Service Using Inforgraphics
Área Tecnológica
Sistemas de Informação
Local do Estágio
DEI-FCTUC
Enquadramento
Information Graphics (infographics) is a multimodal approach used in magazines, textbooks and scientific articles to provide an effective representation of information, data or knowledge. It consists of a combination of written text (e.g. keywords, phrases, and paragraphs), images (abstract or naturalistic) and graphics (e.g. trees, charts, bars, arrows, numbers, among others). Infographics have been successfully used in many areas such as economics, politics, ecology, city planning, etc. We believe that they can also be used with a considerable impact to foster the understanding of real-world services and service systems among entrepreneurs, executives, and consultants. In other words, infographics can be employed to explain the goal, structure and objectives of services, service process steps, and service elements.
The service sector accounts for most of the world’s economic activity, but it’s the least studied part of the economy [1]. Thus, infographics can be an important tool to change this situation. Understanding how services are structured as systems and the benefits of using different services is becoming increasingly critical for society [2]. While extensive research on services has been conducted in the areas of IT processes, business marketing, and distributed software systems, research on understanding how services can be effectively portrayed using infographics has not been explored so far.
A good example of what can be achieved with the use of infographics in the area of business is illustrated in the handbook written by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur titled Generating Business Models (see http//www.businessmodelgeneration.com/)[3]. While the text was written by two research scientists from a business management school, Alan Smith was the creative director. His skills made him think visually, logically and critically to envision the design project from beginning to end. The success of this initiative has already transcended many worldwide boundaries and a Portuguese translation of the handbook already exists.
References
[1] J. Spohrer, P. P. Maglio, J. Bailey, and D. Gruhl, “Steps toward a science of service systems,” Computer, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 71-77, jan. 2007.
[2] J. Spohrer and P. P. Maglio, Service Science: Toward a Smarter Planet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010, pp. 1-30.
[3] Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, Wiley; 1 ed., ISBN-10: 0470876417.
Objetivo
The objective of this project is to explore the use of infographics to bridge computer science and design to uncover the unused potential of USDL [4, 5, 6], the Unified Service Description Language. USDL is a service modeling language and infographics can help entrepreneurs, managers and business people to understand better service models. In the past, only the quality of physical goods and products was primarily driven by adherence to manufacturing specifications. With the introduction of USDL there is a paradigm shift which sees that the quality of services can also be represented and controlled by using guiding specifications. The USDL language models service concepts and properties such as service level, pricing, legal aspects, participants, marketing material, distribution channels, bundling, operations, interfaces, resources, etc.
It is not obvious how to deal with infographics, where to begin reading and which reading paths to choose in order to create meaning of the multimodal message when generating service models using USDL. Among other things, we want to explore how it is difficult for executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs to integrate the graphical and the textual part of a service model if it is not clear how they are semantically connected, and to quickly understand graphics with a complicated structure [7].
References
[4] Jorge Cardoso, Alistair Barros, Norman May, and Uwe Kylau. Towards a unified service description language for the internet of services: Requirements and first developments. In IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, Florida, USA, 2010. IEEE Computer Society Press.
[5] Jorge Cardoso and Paulo Rupino. Service science: concepts, tools and platforms to support digital services for SME. In Workshop on Enterprise Systems and Technology (I-WEST 2011), 2011.
[6] Jorge Cardoso, Matthias Winkler, and Konrad Voigt. A service description language for the internet of services. In First International Symposium on Services Science (ISSS'09), Leipzig, Germany, 2009.
[7] Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant, Chap. 14: Information Visualization, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. ISBN-13: 9780321197863, Addison-Wesley.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
(a) Literature review, discussion, collaboration and research on the use of infographics for science. Identification of the main factors to consider when selecting infographics to represent concepts, conceptualizations, data, information, and knowledge. Definition of a business use case which will drive the research project until completion. Identify synergies with the ISG research group (September-October de 2013).
(b) Review of USDL specification and identify the main concepts to be expressed with infographics. Propose an approach with a rational for the project. (November-December de 2013).
(c) Mappings between infographics and USDL concepts. Define a unifying information graphics for USDL. Using rapid prototyping, illustrate the innovative concept of using infographics for USDL (December 2013 and January 2013).
(d) Writing and defense of mid-term report (December 2013 and January 2014).
(e) First prototype (February de 2013). Generate the first demo version of infographics articulating the concepts of USDL. Show it can be effectively used to increase USDL comprehension with the business use case definition (step a)). The prototype will help defining additional requirements and will also allow receiving feedback from the member of the group.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
(f) Dynamic infographics (February-March 2014) – Explore dynamic infographics generation (e.g., using Many Eyes from IBM, Processing, Flash, or HTML5). Study the use of concepts similar to the ones present in the Mobile Playbook from Google. Develop a prototype based on the infographics generated in the first semester.
(g) Implementation (April-June de 2014) – Implement the concept identified in phase (f). Show a running prototype and articulate the innovative concepts explored. Review the business use cases to better illustrate the benefits of infographics for USDL.
(h) Documentation (running during the project) – Integration and revision of the documentation produced in each phase of the project into the final documentation which describe the work carried out. Write the final version of the business use case.
(i) Writing and defense of the final report (May and July 2014). Final master thesis writing, coding, integration, testing, modeling, cleaning, etc. If time allows, take the final master thesis and formatted it with a suitable format to be submit to a conference. (Help will be provided).
Condições
This work will be carried out at DEI/Universidade de Coimbra within the Information System Group (ISG). A shared and suitable room will be made available to all the students. Meetings will be held every week.
Orientador
Jorge Cardoso/Paulo Rupino
jcardoso@dei.uc.pt 📩