Utilization rate of the fleet: a novel performance metric for a novel shared mobility

Car-sharing systems have irrupted in our cities following the shared mobility paradigm. They have evolved the personal mobility market from product-based into service-oriented, which ultimately provides a positive impact on the city’s sustainability. Car sharing systems are a complex interactive service, whose dynamics can dramatically affect its operational viability. In order to better asses this viability, we must rely on data to produce novel metrics that characterize both the user behavior and the service performance. Up to date, research has focused on modeling the demand on the basis of the number of rentals that start within a specific time slot. However, this approach seems unable to provide a representative metric of the performance of a car-sharing system. In this paper, we propose a novel metric, the utilization rate of the fleet, which considers the precise number of vehicles within a fleet that are in service every minute of the day. From this basic metric, we derive a key performance indicator (KPI) to reflect the viability of any car-sharing system in economic and sustainability terms. We have applied this new metric and KPI to a dataset with 449 days of car2go data, collected in 10 European cities.

DIGITAL GOVERNANCE EMERGENCE AND IMPORTANCE

The research is a conceptual paper that explains its effect on society and the realistic models of digital governance. In this paper, we discuss fundamental questions such as how the term “digital governance” can be defined in the present age; what is the role of modern information technology in achieving the objectives of digital governance; whether digital governance is a revolutionary tool for transforming government governance around the world; and what are the Digital Governance theoretical models that can help Governments ensure the provision of citizens’ services and facilities. In addition, the research compared various digital governance models, including a broadcasting model, a Critical Flow Model, a Comparative Analysis Model, an E-Advocacy model, and an Interactive Service Model.

Identification of Usability Issues of Interactive Technologies in Cultural Heritage through Heuristic Evaluations and Usability Surveys

Usability is a principal aspect of the system development process to improve and augment system facilities and meet users’ needs and necessities in all domains. It is no exception for cultural heritage. Usability problems of the interactive technology practice in cultural heritage museums should be recognized thoroughly from the viewpoints of experts and users. This paper reports on a two-phase empirical study to identify the usability problems in audio guides and websites of cultural heritage museums in Vietnam, as a developing country, and Australia, as a developed country. In phase one, five-user experience experts identified usability problems using the set of usability heuristics, and proposed suggestions to mitigate these issues. Ten usability heuristics identified a total of 176 problems for audio guides and websites. In phase two, we conducted field usability surveys to collect the real users’ opinions to detect the usability issues and examine the negative-ranked usability. The outstanding issues for audio guides and websites were pointed out. Identification of relevant usability issues and users’ and experts’ suggestions for these technologies should be given immediate attention to helping organizations and interactive service providers improve technologies’ adoptions. The paper’s findings are reliable inputs for our future study about the preeminent UX framework for interactive technology in the CH domain.

The SMOOTH-Robot: A Modular, Interactive Service Robot

The SMOOTH-robot is a mobile robot that—due to its modularity—combines a relatively low price with the possibility to be used for a large variety of tasks in a wide range of domains. In this article, we demonstrate the potential of the SMOOTH-robot through three use cases, two of which were performed in elderly care homes. The robot is designed so that it can either make itself ready or be quickly changed by staff to perform different tasks. We carefully considered important design parameters such as the appearance, intended and unintended interactions with users, and the technical complexity, in order to achieve high acceptability and a sufficient degree of utilization of the robot. Three demonstrated use cases indicate that such a robot could contribute to an improved work environment, having the potential to free resources of care staff which could be allocated to actual care-giving tasks. Moreover, the SMOOTH-robot can be used in many other domains, as we will also exemplify in this article.

The Working Class in the Service Sector: Outlining the Issue and Reviewing Current Sociological Discourse

This study focuses on reviewing and analyzing the current sociological discourse devoted to the problems of routine service labor. The article reveals such aspects as the specifics of interactive service work, methods for assessing the size and composition of the service portion of the working class, how the updated properties of labor relations influence the traditional methods used by researchers to conceptualize them, the specific qualities of class consciousness inherent to the service sphere. It has been established that in foreign discourse of sociology of labor, research in the service sphere is currently at the forefront. The focus is on such problems as the structure of the new post-industrial working class, the inclusion of the client into the traditional worker/employer dyad as a third element that reconfigures the stable structures of labor relations, the increased importance of “emotional labor”, physicality and the so-called “soft qualities” of workers, the ideology of consumer sovereignty and the problems that it generates, the precarization of labor that leads to the deprivation of interactive service workers, the class consciousness and resistance practices of routine services employees. In domestic science, this issue is considered mainly from the standpoint of economics and management. In Russian sociology, service research has not been fully updated, there is no theoretical foundation, and the concept of service workers as part of the working class has not yet taken form. The majority of Russian authors rely on the structural and functional paradigm in the study of the service sphere, which does not correlate with the problems relevant to international sociology and the methods of their analysis.

Fragmentation and Audience Activity on Video-on-Demand Platform: Netflix and the ‘Binge-watching’

One of digital transformation of television systems is an interactive service called video-on-demand (VOD). VOD provides full control to its users, by allowing viewers to enjoy, choose, store, and even download the desired audio-visual content anytime and through any electronic communication device. The presence of Netflix and other VOD service providers is transforming people's behavior patterns in watching television. People are beginning to switch to watching audiovisual content and episodes the same televisions or programs known as binge-watching through online streaming. This study focused on the concept of audiences’ activities based on Levy and Windahl’s typology model. The study also explored the motivation that was a part of uses and gratification theory. This new audience habit and motivation were explored by qualitative approach. The interview was conducted to the Netflix subscribers in Jakarta to discover the behavior activities and motivation of binge-watching. The thematic analysis was applied to analyze the process of fragmentation and audience activity that occurs in a very active new media society.

Technical requirements and economic benefit evaluation of interaction between vessel charging and battery swapping stations and power Grid

Electric vessels have developed rapidly with the advancement of transportation electrification in recent years. The power battery capacity of large vessels usually reaches several MWhs, in which case battery change technology is more applicable. A vessel charging and battery swapping station has the dual attributes of power utilization and energy storage and can realize Vessel to Grid through charging and discharging facilities. Aiming at the scenarios of interaction between vessel charging and battery swapping stations and the power grid, this paper studied technical requirements of several participants, established an input-output analysis model and analyzed multiple influencing factors. The results show that revenues cannot be increased effectively with the increase of the number of spare batteries alone; the interactive service can achieve a balance of payments when the battery cost is higher than 1.4 ¥/ Wh, and; benefits may not be gained when the battery life is less than 5 years.

Linguistic Employment Niches: Southern Dialect across Industries

The authors examine how linguistic niches may develop in certain industries. Using acoustic measurement techniques, the authors examine the extent to which workers in different industries display dialect features associated with the American South. The data are drawn from 190 semistructured sociolinguistic interviews from 2008 to 2017. Six linguistic variables were constructed to measure dialect features associated with southern American English. The results show that workers who are employed in the technology industry display significantly fewer southern dialect features than workers in interactive service work, law, and government. The general movement away from southern American English over time was also more prominent among technology workers. These results suggest that newer and more professional industries display less traditional patterns of southern speech. While the results do not support causal claims, they imply that individuals tend to work in industries that match their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.