The Smart City and application development on top of open data

Why is the Smart City relevant?

Perhaps you’ve heard about certain aspects concerning the Smart City, but aren’t quite sure what it really means in terms of open data or application development. You’re already somewhat aware of the advances in IT, IoT, 5G, and the service economy, but still not quite sure how all of this converges together.

To give some background to the relevance of the city going forward, the following video by Shell gives some background of the implications of the growing city. Shell has done quite a lot of research  related to scenario planning and the future projections of the city context from the energy perpective.

So what is the Smart City?

The Smart City has been defined in the EU publication, Mapping Smart Cities in the EU, as “a city seeking to address public issues via ICT-based solutions based on a multi-stakeholder, municipally based partnership.” A Smart City is one with at least one initiative addressing one or more of the following six characteristics: Smart Governance, Smart People, Smart Living, Smart Mobility, Smart Economy and Smart Environment. (Manville, Cochrane, Cave, Millard, Pederson, Thaarup, Liebe, Wissner, Roel Massink, & Kotterink, 2014.)

Open data and what does it mean to application developers?

There are many open data drivers (and barriers) that should also be understood to give a frame of reference on what open data is and/or how it can be used in various countries.

The top 10 drivers of open data are summarized in the EU publication, The Openness of Government. The top 10 drivers include a variety of drivers from political leadership, regional initiatives, European legislation, citizen and market initiatives. (Huijboom Tijs, & Van den Broek, 2011.)

As cities allow free access to information and datasets more and more, open data brings opportunities for citizens and businesses as it can provide a free resource to work with or a contextual framework for an application or a service.

By opening information and datasets related to e.g. public services, this enables citizens and businesses to process this data and even combine it with other data to create applications and services for the general population, like real-time traffic information. (Manville, Cochrane, Cave, Millard, Pederson, Thaarup, Liebe, Wissner, Roel Massink, & Kotterink, 2014.)

Here is an example of a visualization of city development using open data.

See how #Helsinki has grown in the last 200 years. Created with #opendata from @kaupunkimittaus through @HRInfoshare pic.twitter.com/mC5M4BUSyt

— Topi Tjukanov (@tjukanov) March 27, 2017

Sources:

Huijboom Tijs, N., & Van den Broek, T. (2011). Open data: an international comparison of strategies, European Journal of ePractice. Accessed 31.10.2017. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/2014-06/ePractice%20Journal-%20Vol.%2012-March_April%202011.pdf

Manville, C. Cochrane, G., Cave, J., Millard, J., Pederson, J., Thaarup, R., Liebe, A., Wissner, M., Roel Massink, R., & Kotterink, B., (2014). Mapping smart cities in the EU. Accessed 31.10.2017. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/507480/IPOLITRE_ET(2014)507480_EN.pdf

Using persona data across internal silos and customer touchpoints

Accurate personas can have many business benefits. Personas can be a strategical necessity and even beneficial in gaining customers. There are some designers that see personas as essential and others that don’t. Regardless of which side of the fence you are on, the reality is that accurate user research data on personas is gaining traction (even outside of the traditional parameters of goal-directed design), and even though one designer might not use personas, they still could be used in different capacities within various areas of the same organization.

Generally, when we talk about personas, individuals are targeting various persona types, for example, the buyer persona (prospective customers or users), the marketing persona (users searching for specific product or service information and then reading website), various blog personas (users reading blogs gaining some knowledge) the UI design persona (users using the application), the customer service persona (users requesting help), and the list potentially continues to whatever customer touch point is available.

Digitalization and the effect data has on persona research

The persona enables the designer to focus on a specific set of user traits which enables  the designer to manage the vast user information, instead of focusing on the information of thousands of users. However, a main problem is that due to lack of detailed knowledge of the customer or user base, personas are generally hastily done, or even completely theoretical, and only valid for one siloed area. Personas generally target one singular siloed touchpoint, and the persona knowledge across various user touchpoints in an organization, is generally not shared or utilized within that organization to the full extent that is possible.

With the emergence of relatively easily accessible data and various analytic solutions, for example, Google Analytics can give the designer relative easy access to actual data to back up their persona research. Google Analytics can monitor your web site, and once data collection has been activated and data collected, it can provide analytical reports. There are a variety of reports, for example, information on real-time location sources, demographic information, language, general audience, technology and device information. In an organization, this type of web site data might be collected internally by a digital marketer, but ensuring access to others inside the organization, for example, a blogger, UI/UX designer, is where there is potential for innovation.

Utilizing the persona data across the organization

There could be a wide variety of internal company stakeholders that utilize persona and user knowledge (as theoretically anyone could benefit from user knowledge as there should be a general awareness of the user base). By accessing persona research especially outside one’s own silo, stakeholders could gain understanding of their users across various touch points and then utilize that value in many ways, for example, even potentially extending the software functionality outside of initial design concept.

So once a persona for a certain user segmentation is defined, then it should be determined how that specific persona fits into the bigger picture and its data availability ensured to be accessible across silos. The persona could be utilized and accessed for designing (and potentially merging) functionality for various customer touchpoints. At the very least, it would give a frame of reference and basic user knowledge could be gained for all stakeholders. A persona map across the customer’s journey could be utilized, that showcases the persona evolution, from the initial buyer, to the user that searches in Google for a service and arrives on the web site, to the user that finds a web post that answers a question on the product or service, to the user that uses the application and has some service related questions.

Understanding the customer and user across silos, brings a holistic view to the customer and end user. It brings a competitive advantage to those developing the product, and can be an innovative source of ideas into future potential functionality and a user design direction that could otherwise be easily overlooked or neglected.

Emerging technologies, user adoption and interaction techniques

Virtual reality (VR) augmented reality (AR), mixed reality and holography technology developments are gaining wide scale user enthusiasm, with wide scale user adoption not too far away.  With these technologies, the user will be able to do more gestural techniques, for example, touching and interacting in virtual space and also with holograms. There will also be interaction using other devices, for example the stylus, with both haptic or force feedback and visual feedback possibilities. These technological developments will change every day usage and interaction techniques as we’ve come to know them.

VR has already gained relative user adoption, and ever increasing enthusiasm. VR is now also moving also into different social VR dimensions, for example, Facebook recently announced Facebook Spaces which provides functionality for interacting in a virtual reality space and connecting the virtual world with the real world.

AR, though, still needs some development before main stream user adoption, for example, displays should be lighter, affordable prices, user interface/experience development.  AR enthusiasts have a vision of the eventual elimination of devices, for example, smartphone and the variety of monitors/devices. They will be replaced by AR glasses, other wearables, holographic monitors, holographic keyboards, etc. “Basic AR”, which is already in use – has extensive and endless usage possibilities – as one example, an Australian high school is piloting an educational program using the Microsoft HoloLens.

But AR development plans go even further from the ”basic AR,” so “full AR,” which includes plans for brain-computer-interface (BCI) or neuro-technology sensors. While most react to full AR with apprehension and low user enthusiasm, it even remains to be seen to what degree it is even possible to overcome any deficient product features.  Even with “basic AR,” the challenge is there to safely test interaction, as speculation began that Apple was also working on a pair of AR glasses, after an employee reported eye pain after using a new prototype.

Mixed reality has also potential for wide-scale user adoption, for example EchoPixel’s True 3-D software takes medical data and transforms it into 3D holographic images and enables interaction with holograms as if they were real physical objects. With 3D glasses paired with an HP Zvr display, holograms appear to pop out of the screen with relative ease. A stylus allows the user to grab and manipulate the holograms.

But there are also products that focus on just plain holography – so no need to always focus on peripherals  –  as no glasses are involved. RealView Imaging company, introduced the world’s first 3D holographic display and interface system. The company’s proprietary technology projects realistic, dynamic 3D holographic images, allowing the user – with hands and without glasses – to literally touch and interact precisely with hologram visual output (rotate, slice, mark and measure).

Technological developments will change our interaction techniques and our every day usage, with gestural techniques emerging more prevalent than ever before. But it’s hard to exactly predict the future – what technology users will actually adopt – as the future always plays itself out on its own terms.