Description of the deliverable content and purpose
This report presents the methodological approach that has been used and developed throughout the e-SENSE project within work package 1 (Scenarios, Requirements and Socio-Economic impact),in order to accompany the e-SENSE system design with an end-to-end user and business scenario based design support. While describing and highlighting the innovation of each phase of this Human and Social Sciences (HSS) process, the report highlights the consistency and connections between the phases that led to a global integrated HSS solution. The HSS solution was especially tailored for e-SENSE purpose by adapting and improving several well proven methodological tools: user centric studies, scenario based design, user and functional requirements analysis and business scenarios exploration.
A key objective of this document is to bring this e-SENSE methodological innovation in user and business scenario aided design to the HSS research community that is involved in the design processes of technological innovation.
It demonstrates that each phase of the e-SENSE HSS process brought innovation in methodology that will enrich the existing methods used by the HSS community when accompanying technological design process. At the same time, it demonstrates that the methodological innovation is a necessity for HSS researchers when involving their tools into the design process of technology applications since the HSS solution has to be tailored to the project objectives. In addition, the methodological solution must take into accounts the needs of the project depending on its phase into the design process, which is more or less early (upstream or close to services that can be delivered the users)
In particular, the e-SENSE experience shows that the combination of a variety of methods and approaches (business oriented, user oriented, technology oriented) enables achieving the main role of the HSS in the research and development projects which is a mediation role. The innovation brought by the e-SENSE HSS approach is that it demonstrates clearly that this role is both, internal and external, internal by organising the project vision and technological proposals, and external by making the users and business actors’ point of view considered in the designed system. The HSS study engineering in e-SENSE has provided this continuous internal and external mediation role by combining methods for co-designing the e-SENSE system. The HSS methods involved in the e-SENSE design process have sequentially contributed to the project evolution, by providing mechanisms for arbitration, translation, filtering, ranking and recommendations that are always the result of the negotiation between technology, business and user point of view.
The process started with the elaboration of the e-SENSE architectural vision and key concepts, by developing an understanding for what context is. The focus here was especially on the psycho-social dimension of the context, and how to capture context information by the means of body, object and environment sensor networks to cover the needs of the users and business actors in the personal, community and industrial application spaces.
Then, an innovative scenario based design approach has been implemented to create the e-SENSE scenario portfolio and audio visual demos, which are the central mediation tools in the e-SENSE HSS approach, as they support both internal mediation (between the project actors) and external mediation (between the e-SENSE project and the users as well as business actors).
From these scenarios, user and application requirements have been translated and led to the innovative concept of Context Information Building Blocks that are key elements for designing the e-SENSE system since they provide the higher level of abstraction of context information that the system needs to capture in order to satisfy the requirements of context aware applications.
In parallel, the application scenarios have been submitted to the users in three application spaces and in three countries in order to evaluate the acceptability, to provide additional recommendations to the e-SENSE system designers and to identify the most promising application scenarios.
In conclusion, a business scenario exploration and analysis was performed with both internal industrial partners of e-SENSE project and external business actors of the involved application spaces. It demonstrates how it has been possible to involve actors of the technology developments, the concerned categories of users, and finally the business actors into the elaboration of scenarios for the future e-SENSE technology applications. This is a typical but tailored end-to-end user, business and scenario aided design process. The e-SENSE technology and application scenarios are the result of this continuous triangular negotiation between the technological e-SENSE innovation, the users’ expectations and the business aspects.
This e-SENSE Deliverable is public and available to everybody without charge.
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