E-service Design Research Articles

Influences of Perceived E-Service Risks: The Moderating Role of Perceived Benefits

The purpose of this study is to test effects of risk dimensions on customers' attitude toward using e-services, and to investigate whether risk effects are moderated by utilitarian and hedonic benefits associated with the service. A survey of 436 users of a digital mailbox system, where citizens securely receive mail from the public sector, was undertaken to test the relationship proposed by the research model. The data was analyzed using linear regression analysis, and interactions were probed using the Johnson-Neyman technique. The effects of each risk dimension on attitude towards using the e-service were reduced by hedonic benefit associations, but not by utilitarian benefit associations. Interaction analyses suggest that customers who perceive the e-service as hedonic may have more positive attitude towards using the service if it involves certain risk aspects. Managers of e-services should consider the effect that different risk dimensions have on customers' usage attitude. E-service design should incorporate elements that adds to the hedonic value of the service, which may reduce negative effects of risk. Customers should be segmented according to their hedonic motivations, as they will differ in terms of vulnerability to risk. Existing research on acceptance of e-services is scarce in terms of theoretically derived explanations for boundary conditions for risk effects. This paper fills this gap by testing the interaction effects between individual risk dimensions and utilitarian/hedonic benefits on users' attitude to use an online mailbox.

Focus, Goal and Roles in E-Service Design: Five Ideal Types of the Design Process

New technology means new opportunities for both the private and public sectors. Serviceoriented solutions based on e-services are no exception. Such solutions can support efficient and flexible collaboration between actors, as well as enable opportunities for the design of new and highly innovative services. However, service-oriented solutions also mean a number of challenges. In order to successfully design e-services, a number of strategic choices have to be made by the service provider organization, such as deciding on the roles to be played by the provider and customers in the design process, and deciding which focus should govern the design. For example, should the e-service design focus on fit into the provider's IT architecture; should the e-service design focus on fit into the provider's internal processes; or should the e-service design focus on the interactions with the customers? In this paper, we present five different ideal types of e-service design that can support such choices. The five types differ in their views on the main goals of the e-service design; their views on the service providers' and customers' roles and responsibilities in the design process; and their views on the focus of the e-service design process. We also present the benefits and drawbacks of the different ideal types, and describe how real cases of e-service design can be categorized according to these types.

A Study on Healthcare Support e-Service Design for Senior Citizens

The urgent needs of healthcare assistant for elderly senior citizens increase rapidly. This paper presents an e-service design on stroke-precaution for senior citizens, followed by its implementation and evaluation. The healthcare support e-service design focuses on the aging problems including the degeneracy of memory and vision as well as the recession of attention. These physiological problems become the barriers for senior citizens to learn healthcare knowledge effectively. In order to help senior citizens to obtain appropriate knowledge for stroke-precaution, this study provides a healthcare support e-service and its interface design that specifically addresses the physiological issues for elderly. In order to increase the accessibility of the healthcare support e-service, we utilize multimedia streaming technology and video clips to present stroke–precaution knowledge for elderly senior citizens. Different from traditional e-learning system provide massive information for user, this study provide a personalized e-service design which only provide related healthcare information according to user’s health condition. The healthcare support e-service is designed for senior citizens that provide appropriate user interface addressing their situations. Analysis of learnability, perceived system performance, memoraility and satisfactions are based on different ages and gender. Analytical result indicates our service design could help elderly to leap over the physiological problems they encountered. With the healthcare support e-service, life quality for elderly senior citizens and their families could be significantly improved.

Foreword of Special Issue on “E-Service and Applications”

Foreword of Special Issue on “E-Service and Applications”

Multi-channel service design process: challenges and solutions

Organisations face significant challenges in designing e-service interactions with customers, especially if those customers interact through other channels as well. The aim of these organisations is to ensure a coherent, reliable service quality throughout all interactions. However, in a number of cases, we came across ill-structured and solution-driven processes in e-service design. To guarantee a less chaotic approach, a certain level of method and structure has to be in place. The objective of this paper is to develop a design method that offers guidance and structure to multi-channel services. In this paper we: • Evaluate existing service and product design methods. • Specify and substantiate requirements based on an analysis of multiple case studies.

MODELING COOPERATION IN VIRTUAL DISTRICTS: A METHODOLOGY FOR E-SERVICE DESIGN

E-services can be used to wrap an organization's information system and to provide a standard interface that enables cooperation with other information systems. As a consequence, e-services should not only support operating activities, but also embed mechanisms for inter-organizational coordination and control over operating activities. Inter-organizational coordination and control are based on contractual agreements that coordinate processes across cooperating companies and establish mechanisms to control the fulfillment of production goals. The objective of this paper is to describe a methodological approach for the design of e-services that supports the specification of inter-organizational coordination and control requirements. The paper explains how the methodology is structured in three phases, from requirements specification to conceptual design and implementation. The first phase of the methodology supports the specification of cooperation requirements, which constitute the static description of coordination and control requirements. In the second methodological phase, this static description is completed with a dynamic description of the actions to be taken upon exceptions, which occur when cooperating partners do not comply with cooperation goals. The static and dynamic description of coordination and control represent a conceptual specification of a business transaction. In the final methodological phase, this conceptual specification is implemented based on the WSDL and BPEL4WS languages for e-service design. The methodology is tested on the case study of the Italian production district of Matera.