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This paper aims to explore the meaning of smart office environments from a user perspective by investigating user preferences and expectations.

Eleven semi-structured interviews with the users after moving into a smart office building of a Dutch Municipality and an observation as complementary data were conducted. The data were analysed based on the grounded theory and thematic analysis, combining a reflexive approach to the literature review.

Two main themes were revealed addressing user expectations and preferences for smart office environments: “enhanced interaction” with the social and physical office environment and “sense-making” of the smart concept (or smartness). Within these themes, basic and smart office aspects were identified and classified based on their association with smart office concepts or technology.

The findings reveal the meaning of the smart office concepts from a user perspective by highlighting the importance of user experience on enhanced interaction and sense-making of the smart office concept, equipped with basic and smart aspects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to qualitatively examine drivers underlying the meaning of smart office concepts from a user point of view. Organisations, environmental psychologists, designers and managers can use the findings of this study to develop guidelines for a successful smart office design.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Mashups have been studied extensively in the literature; nevertheless, the large body of work in this area focuses on service/data level integration and leaves UI level integration, hence UI mashups, almost unexplored. The latter generates digital environments in which participating sources exist as individual entities; member applications and data sources share the same graphical space particularly in the form of widgets. However, the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. The authors call such an integration “widget orchestration” and the resulting application “mashup by orchestration”. This article aims to explore and address challenges regarding the realization of widget‐based UI mashups and UI level integration, prominently in terms of widget orchestration, and to assess their suitability for building web‐based personal environments.

The authors provide a holistic view on mashups and a theoretical grounding for widget‐based personal environments. The authors identify the following challenges: widget interoperability, end‐user data mobility as a basis for manual widget orchestration, user behavior mining – for extracting behavioral patterns – as a basis for automated widget orchestration, and infrastructure. The authors introduce functional widget interfaces for application interoperability, exploit semantic web technologies for data interoperability, and realize end‐user data mobility on top of this interoperability framework. The authors employ semantically enhanced workflow/process mining techniques, along with Petri nets as a formal ground, for user behavior mining. The authors outline a reference platform and architecture that is compliant with the authors' strategies, and extend W3C widget specification respectively – prominently with a communication channel – to foster standardization. The authors evaluate their solution approaches regarding interoperability and infrastructure through a qualitative comparison with respect to existing literature, and provide a computational evaluation of the behavior mining approach. The authors realize a prototype for a widget‐based personal learning environment for foreign language learning to demonstrate the feasibility of their solution strategies. The prototype is also used as a basis for the end‐user assessment of widget‐based personal environments and widget orchestration.

The evaluation results suggest that the interoperability framework, platform, and architecture have certain advantages over existing approaches, and the proposed behavior mining techniques are adequate for the extraction of behavioral patterns. User assessments show that widget‐based UI mashups with orchestration (i.e. mashups by orchestration) are promising for the creation of personal environments as well as for an enhanced user experience.

This article provides an extensive exploration of mashups by orchestration and their role in the creation of personal environments. Key challenges are described, along with novel solution strategies to meet them.

This paper aims to report on lessons learnt from operating a location‐aware mobile social networking application, and critical functionalities that were deemed necessary in order to provide a pleasant user experience. As a result of user feedback, the authors enhanced their social networking system, G2G, with functionalities such as login with Facebook.com credentials without the need to sign up to their system first, and a much improved localization system that works across different mobile operators. Mobile advertisement was included for enhancing the user experience.

A modular approach has been followed for the system design. The original G2G system interfaced cleanly with the Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) and the mobile advertisement subsystem through wrapper components.

The result was a much improved user experience as existing Facebook subscriptions facilitated new users to use the system. Mobile advertisement functionalities were seen as an essential add‐on. The aforementioned functionalities, combined with the ability to upload/search/download location‐aware multimedia notes, and a back‐end interface that allows advertisers to add location‐aware, personalized content, resulted in a significantly enhanced user experience as evidenced by higher user active participation to the system.

The enhanced system integrates seamelessly with Facebook (facilitating thus the entry of new users) and with a mobile advertisement platform, and provides for advanced security functionalities. Moreover, it supports Android‐based smart‐phones.

This study aims to investigate the engagement gap between Metaverse and in-person travel, the influence of Metaverse tourism on tourists and the industry and the challenges and responses associated with Metaverse technology. The study presents practical cases and highlights the implications of this research for practice, society and future research.

This study uses a literature review to explore concerns about Metaverse technology in tourism. It analyzes the difference between in-person travel and Metaverse tourism, the impact on tourists and the industry and challenges and responses to Metaverse. The review shows a rising trend in Metaverse tourism research.

These findings suggest differences between Metaverse tourism and in-person travel. By providing personalized travel options, social interaction, immersive experiences and soliciting visitor feedback, it is possible to enhance the tourist experience. Additionally, the study highlights the opportunities and challenges that Metaverse tourism presents to the tourism industry. The study provides practical cases in the tourism industry and implications for practice, society and future research.

The study’s implications for Metaverse tourism are practical, societal and future research-related. Metaverse technology can enhance the tourist experience through personalized options, social interaction, immersive experiences and feedback. This inclusivity can promote social equity and cultural exchange. Further research is needed to explore the social effects of Metaverse tourism and its long-term impacts on local communities, economies and the environment.

This study contributes by exploring the impact of Metaverse tourism, supporting academic research and practice. It fills a knowledge gap by analyzing the application of Metaverse technology in tourism, providing insights for researchers and practitioners. It offers practical guidance by identifying opportunities and challenges in Metaverse tourism, fostering industry innovation. Additionally, it informs policymakers about the impact of Metaverse tourism on development.

The COVID-19 virus outbreak began in December 2019 and rapidly spread to every continent on Earth. The analysts have predicted that COVID-19 and other similar pandemics will continue in the coming decade and badly affect offline businesses. As a result, the offline platform is also shifting to the online platform and online demands are increasing daily. The traditional two-dimensional E-Commerce websites are designed to provide simple, browser-based interfaces to allow users to access available products and services. Whilst virtual representations are an essential consideration in establishing trust, most virtual representation sites fall short in mimicking real-life human representation. This paper aims to focus on three-dimensional (3D) E-Commerce technology that presents how virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can help deal with limitations and improve E-Commerce operations. It is built as an internet-only tool, a person-centred shopping assistant created following user-centred design principles to be used on various computing platforms, including desktop and mobile devices. The paper shows how VR and AR can offer more precise product information in 3D E-Commerce environments. The virtual store experience is also enhanced by an AR assistant that helps the users by giving them all the required information in audio form or using its avatar.

Implementation of VR and AR in E-Commerce will increase customer satisfaction. Sub hypothesis – to study the implementation of VR in E-Commerce. To study the implementation of AR in E-Commerce. To study the inclusion of E-Commerce sites in an open-world game. To study the customer satisfaction of users using VR stores.

The scope of work is concentrated on the urban Indian market especially targeting the country’s youth who are already or ready to indulge in VR such as video games, cinema and other activities (Mattsson and Barkman, 2019). This demography is more open to learning and using VR. The primary segment of E-Commerce that we are concentrating upon is fashion. Here, the regular user needs to have more immersed knowledge about the product rather than just the written information like how would they look in a dress or will the size available on the website fit me or not.

A perfect system does not exist in the world. A terrible disease has landed on the planet. Very soon, it will be impossible to escape from this current situation. The effects of this plague have been felt in every sector of the world. The researchers also claim that physical stores will continue to exist. There will never be anything that replaces the ability to hold and use products or have personal face-to-face interactions with retail professionals. For the time being, brick-and-mortar retail is having a difficult time, but immersive technology is starting to be used to enhance the in-store experience. The good news is that this should help retailers increase their chances of survival. However, the melody of 3D E-Commerce is it would help out the in-store experience.

This study aims to investigate the influence of the reviewed establishment’s price level and the user’s social network size and reputation status on consumers’ tendency to post more visual imagery content. Furthermore, it explores the moderating effects of user experiences and geographic distance on these dynamics.

This study adopts a multi-method approach to explore both the determinants behind the sharing of user-generated photos in online reviews and their internal mechanisms. Using a comprehensive secondary data set from Yelp.com, the authors focused on restaurant reviews from a prominent tourist destination to construct econometric models incorporating time-fixed effects. To enhance the robustness of the authors’ findings, the authors complemented the big data analysis with a series of controlled experiments.

The reviewed establishments price level and the users reputation status and social network size incite corresponding motivations conspicuous display “reputation seeking” and social approval motivating users to incorporate more images in reviews. “User experiences can amplify the influence of these factors on image sharing.” An increase in the users geographical distance lessens the impact of the price level on image sharing, but it heightens the influence of the users reputation and social network size on the number of shared images.

As a result of this study, high-end establishments can increase their online visibility by leveraging user-generated visual content. A structured rewards program could significantly boost engagement by incentivizing photo sharing, particularly among users with elite status and extensive social networks. Additionally, online review platforms can enhance users’ experiences and foster more dynamic interactions by developing personalized features that encourage visual content production.

This research, anchored in trait activation theory, offers an innovative examination of the determinants of photo-posting behavior in online reviews by enriching the understanding of how the intricate interplay between users’ characteristics and situational cues can shape online review practices.

Mobile augmented reality (MAR) is one of the advanced three-dimensional (3D) representation tools that has been recently utilized in the construction industry. This paper aims to assess a user’s involvement levels through MAR application that has been experimented against traditional involvement techniques through an existing facility, plan re-designing scenario.

Through reviewing related literature studies in the MAR field, an application has been developed that can superimpose real design alternatives on paper-based markers, allowing for flexible wall positioning, interior and exterior wall material application. As such, an enhanced user involvement experience is created. To measure user involvement levels, the application is experimented with 33 participants having the British University in Egypt’s library building as a case study, followed by survey questionnaires to gather and evaluate user responses.

The results of the analyzed data using SPSS indicated that MAR showed a positive impact on enhancing user involvement and better understanding of design projects. It also allowed users to produce different design alternatives in comparison to the traditional involvement approaches where users showed low design interaction and understanding.

The interactive features of the proposed application facilitate implementing ideas in design of construction projects that require user involvement.

This study aims to explore the potential of virtual positioning systems (VPSs) in revolutionising library access. It examines the benefits and challenges associated with implementing VPSs.

The study takes a comprehensive approach by analysing library users’ current challenges in accessing physical resources and services within traditional library settings. It analyses the benefits of VPSs in enhancing library access, considering factors such as improved navigation, accessibility for personalised recommendations, virtual tours and interactive experiences. The study also examines the implications of implementing VPSs regarding library resource management, staff training and infrastructure requirements.

The findings reveal that VPS has the potential to address various challenges faced by library users, such as limited availability of resources, inconvenient locations and inadequate access for individuals with special needs. VPS offers improved navigation, enhanced accessibility, personalised recommendations, virtual tours and interactive experiences. Implementing VPSs requires robust technological infrastructure, user adoption, privacy considerations and system maintenance. Libraries must invest in hardware, network infrastructure, staff training and data protection measures.

This study contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding the transformation of libraries and the assimilation of emergent technologies. It highlights the potential of VPSs in revolutionising library access. By embracing the latent potential of VPSs, libraries can transcend physical boundaries, enhance user experiences and ensure seamless access to a wealth of resources in a digitised world.

Although the short-video-based application TikTok and its AI-enhanced technology have achieved enormous success and reshaped the user experience, few studies have focused on the user experience in the TikTok context. This study adopts a technology affordance theory lens to identify the main mechanisms contributing to the user experience in the short-video platform context while including user experience level and video length as moderating effects.

This study collected 401 valid questionnaires from TikTok users and used the structural equation modeling approach to examine the proposed research model.

Three technology affordances (perceived effortlessness, perceived recommendation accuracy, and perceived recommendation serendipity) contribute to TikTok users' optimal flow experience. Multi-group analysis results further indicate that individuals react differently to the same stimuli as their experience level increases. Finally, video length critically influences the impact of technology affordances on users' cognitive responses.

As a burgeoning industry, the mechanisms enabling short-video platforms to engage users remain unclear to practitioners and researchers. Thus, this study's technology affordance lens provides necessary insights into how TikTok's innovative and advanced technologies contribute to user flow experience from a context-dependent perspective. Furthermore, given that most existing studies have neglected possible variations in user preferences when investigating the effects of technology, this study enriches the existing literature by employing user experience level and video length as moderators.