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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate modularity degree in terms of interfaces and innovation.

The research objective is achieved through a modeling approach for deciding modular architecture and its implementation regarding unique components and product innovation. A case example is presented to elaborate on the concept of modularity degree and provide an option for choosing the best module from different alternatives.

The presented approach can be considered a product design strategy, in which loose coupling is achieved through standardized component interfaces. Loosely coupled component interfacing is a prerequisite for developing mass customized products. There needs to be a decision support system to formulate the interfacing in order to achieve maximum benefits. This is illustrated in this paper.

The modeling strategy for measuring the modularity level is formulated theoretically. This approach needs to be validated through an empirical study in order to generalize its findings.

In the industrial arena there is a research gap in identifying and measuring the modularity level, which is formulated in the presented approach. It is hoped that this approach will contribute to filling this research gap in the business environment, which would further benefit managers of firms in their corresponding production processes.

The unique contribution of this modeling approach is articulated through analyzing product architecture, with a view to interpreting the component interfaces in a more productive way. This formulation triggers the decision‐making process in complex product development processes.

The present study aims to review the literature concerning Digital Libraries (DLs) and user interfaces in order to identify, determine, and suggest evaluation criteria for a DLs user interface. Accordingly, this study's objectives are threefold: explore which criteria exert a significant relationship with the DLs user interface; identify a set of criteria that appears to be useful for evaluating DLs user interface; and determine evaluation criteria that have more frequency and occurrence in the related texts reviewed.

To do it, first, identifying related texts was necessary. Consequently, keywords such as “DLs user interface evaluation”,” DLs user interfaces”, “DLs evaluation”, “DLs usability”, “user interface evaluation”, “DLs research”, “web sites user interface evaluation”, “user interface standards”, and the like have been searched in the web as well as in some leading databases including Emerald, Proquest, SagePub, ScienceDirect, LISA, ERIC, ACM, and Springer. After identifying and accessing more than 100 evaluative works and some related articles, theoretical and empirical, nearly 50 sources were chosen for final examination.

After reviewing related texts, three major categories are identified: user interface and DLs; DLs and usability; and other studies related to user interface; each one of three identified categories has its own subcategories. Additionally, 22 evaluation criteria for assessing DLs interface have been identified.

The review does not claim to be comprehensive.

Hopefully, criteria such as feedback, ease of use, match between system and the real world, customization, user support, user workload, interaction, compatibility, visibility of system status, user experience, flexibility, and accessibility which have been less considered should be applied more in future, particularly user‐oriented, studies. Furthermore, it is expected that criteria mentioned here could help related bodies pay more attention to the evaluation of EISs, especially DLs interface.

It can be said that this study has contributed to the research into the evaluation of DL interface.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will profoundly influence the ubiquitous computing landscape. Their utility derives not from the computational capabilities of any single sensor node, but from the emergent capabilities of many communicating sensor nodes. Consequently, the details of communication within and across single hop neighborhoods is a fundamental component of most WSN applications. But these details are often complex, and popular embedded languages for WSNs provide only low‐level communication primitives. We propose that the absence of suitable communication abstractions contributes to the difficulty of developing large‐scale WSN applications. To address this issue, we present the design and implementation of a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) abstraction for nesC and TinyOS, the emerging standard for developing WSN applications. We present the key language extensions, operating system services, and automation tools that enable the proposed abstraction. We illustrate these contributions in the context of a representative case study, and analyze the overhead introduced when using our approach. We use these results to draw conclusions regarding the suitably of our work to resource‐constrained sensor nodes.

A rapidly growing segment of the internet is e‐commerce. The future of economic competitiveness for most enterprises relies on entrance and active participation in the e‐commerce market. About a third of the time users fail when they try to purchase products on an e‐commerce site. An essential problem with e‐commerce is that the controls and organization are different for each site. There is no standard way of building the navigation of the e‐commerce site. Most sites do not have a global navigation system and the local one may be confusing, like solving a maze. The goal of this study is to minimize users' look up time and make e‐commerce sites usable so visitors can easily and quickly access information. The objective of this study is to provide an implementation method by which an agent of the artificial intelligence (AI) user interface creates a standard navigation menu, called E‐menu, to increase the usability of e‐commerce.

The selected E‐menu items are based on a study of the graphical user interface (GUI) used in Windows environment and an evaluation of one hundred and two (102) e‐commerce sites. The prototype of the E‐menu system proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. Three sites out of 102 were chosen to be edited by the E‐menu server for the pilot study. This study also applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) identifying components of usefulness and ease of use that predict user attitude toward the usage of the E‐menu system by conducting a Web‐based survey.

The survey result is promising and indicates that the e‐commerce users accept the idea of the E‐menu system. The E‐menu system makes it possible to create a standard navigation menu globally for e‐commerce sites. Although E‐menu is not ready for prime time, the prototype proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. These types of agents will become more popular in the internet paradigm as the number of e‐commerce sites increase and the usability of the sites decrease due to rapid deployment strategies and technological deficiencies.

The paper provides information on a method to increase the usability of e‐commerce sites.

To emphasise the need for remote fieldbus diagnostics and to show a technical solution based on industry standard approaches.

The design and approach takes a Profibus fieldbus, as an example candidate, and captures the diagnostic data using an OPC model and then uses a Java RMI object broker to develop/support the remote end clients.

The findings show, by an implementation example, that it is possible to implement remote diagnostics for a fieldbus network, without interfering with the operation of the network. The findings also highlight the need for security in such a solution.

The implementation example is rather cumbersome, but the paper suggests that all the hardware and software could be implemented on a single embedded processor in a single box. The security issues are flagged as a possible limitation, but solution approaches are briefly suggested.

The paper highlights the lack of standardisation around fieldbus diagnostics. Even for the same fieldbus type, different manufacturers will use different diagnostic protocols and codes. This paper suggests a practical implementation, where the diagnostic codes can be interpreted a fixed stage and presented to an end client in a consistent manner.

This work is based on a two year original research project. The solution makes heavy use of industry standard protocols but the work is original.

Logisticians have always viewed standards as solutions for improving operational compatibility and coordination. This paper aims to contribute to a greater understanding of how standards, upon which logistics systems are designed, developed and coordinated, interact with each other and with other resources in a logistics network for the purpose of improving efficiency and effectiveness.

The literature review permits: defining standards as a coordination mechanism focusing on development, use and evolution of interconnected standards; pointing out the importance of standards for logistics efficiency and effectiveness; and analysis of interrelatedness referring to increasing returns, basic technology and dominant design. The empirical evidence is based on a meta‐case from the automobile industry with information collected from nine case studies based on observations, documents, drafts of standards and interviews.

The case study illustrates major points in prior literature and provides new propositions that enrich the theory and have important managerial implications. Main findings include a better understanding of how standards interact over time, and how they help, as well as hinder technological development in logistics networks. Being exploratory in nature, the paper concludes with theoretical propositions for further research.

The paper contributes to the understanding of an issue is been important, but still not much addressed in prior logistics literature: the use of standards. The combining of literature from three streams of research: logistics, industrial networks and technology development provides interesting insight on which the case analysis is based and from which further research can be developed.

Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) in many sectors of the air transport industry has largely become the assumed way forward for the implementation of future avionics. Progress has already been demonstrated with first generation civil IMA systems such as ELMS and AIMS on the B777. These are quite different implementations, having been optimised for their specific systems domains, and therefore appear to go only some way towards meeting the ultimate goals anticipated by the industry. The promised benefits from the establishment of a suite of standard hardware modules and software interfaces applied commonly across the avionics spectrum, and the expectation of reusing the investment over a number of programmes, appear large and give powerful motivation to fully apply IMA on the next generation of aircraft. However the development and standardisation process still has a long way to go and most of the thrust continues to come from the technical community. There are a number of wider issues and other factors remaining largely undebated but which have important bearing on the extent to which the IMA concept and its promised benefits can be fully realised. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of these issues and to promote discussion within the industry, i.e. on what may be achieved in practice, and the longer‐term view.

This paper proposes that development of formalized standards for the rapid prototyping (RP) industry will help enable the continued growth and further advancement of RP technologies. Appropriate standards can provide common methods for measuring the benefits and limitations of RP, as well as facilitate the transition of current advanced rapid manufacturing capabilities from the research laboratory to commercial products. Results and recommendations from a prior RP industry workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in October 1997 form the basis for this discussion paper. This paper was presented as part of the 2nd Internet Conference on Rapid Prototyping to gather additional information and obtain further viewpoints regarding the need for and potential content of standards for the RP industry. An addendum is provided to summarize and analyze the results of the conference discussion.

Purpose — To provide an overview of recent research that examined how search engine users evaluate and select Web search results and how alternative search engine interfaces can support Web users' credibility assessment of Web search results.

Design/methodology/approach — As theoretical background, Information Foraging Theory (Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card, 1999) from cognitive science and Prominence-Interpretation-Theory (Fogg, 2003) from communication and persuasion research are presented. Furthermore, a range of recent empirical research that investigated the effects of alternative SERP layouts on searchers' information quality or credibility assessments of search results are reviewed and approaches that aim at automatically classifying search results according to specific genre categories are reported.

Findings — The chapter reports on findings that Web users often rely heavily on the ranking provided by the search engines without paying much attention to the reliability or trustworthiness of the Web pages. Furthermore, the chapter outlines how alternative search engine interfaces that display search results in a format different from a list and/or provide prominent quality-related cues in the SERPs can foster searchers' credibility evaluations.

Research limitations/implications — The reported empirical studies, search engine interfaces, and Web page classification systems are not an exhaustive list.

Originality/value — The chapter provides insights for researchers, search engine developers, educators, and students on how the development and use of alternative search engine interfaces might affect Web users' search and evaluation strategies during Web search as well as their search outcomes in terms of retrieving high-quality, credible information.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a common understanding of service‐oriented concepts to enable unambiguous discussion around service‐oriented architecture (SOA). Managers often have limited understanding of SOA, and for some reason, technologists seem to have difficulty explaining the concept using terminology and analogies that managers can understand. This paper addresses the long‐standing communications gap between managers and technologists as they attempt to evaluate how SOA or SOA‐related investments can add business value.

The approach for this paper is to state the problem between managers and technologists and then provide concepts to break down the communication barrier. The paper then goes on to provide an argument for an optimal approach for SOA implementation and investment that meets management requirements.

Unless SOA can be aligned to business processes, it will be viewed as a risky proposition that adds to cost without directly addressing business needs.

Managers need to understand the differing SOA points‐of‐view and what they mean for business performance. If one has difficulty in implementing ERP, then one will have more difficulty in implementing SOA. It is the responsibility of management to understand how these SOA‐related concepts impact the business, if for no other reason than that they are costly and risky. Of course, the concepts vary in cost and complexity, but they all vary in benefit potential to the business.

The originality of this paper can be noted by the fact that confusion around SOA approaches between managers and technologists still exists. This paper seeks to eliminate that widespread confusion by presenting service‐oriented concepts in an unbiased, holistic view.