The question is: What can the internet of things do for the citizen?

See the list of potential topics: http://www.autoidlabs.org/events/ciot2010/page.html

• Submissions due by: 15th of January 2010
• Notifications due by: 8th of March 2010
• Final papers due to LNCS: 31st March 2010
• Workshop day: 17th of May 2010

Check out the organizers and committee here: http://www.autoidlabs.org/events/ciot2010/organizers-committee/page.html
Go and support! Cu in Helsinki

The paper revolves around our long-term research on the idea of using a mobile phone for various retail use cases - be it customer or retailer.

Abstract: The Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA) is a mobile product information system for retailers based on a combination of Near Field Communication (NFC) and the Electronic Product Code (EPC). The MSA aims at optimizing the sales process in retail stores. It enables shop assistants to check the availability and stock information of products directly at the Point of Sale (PoS) with an NFC enabled mobile phone. Thus, shop assistants can inform their customers without letting them wait, which might increase customer satisfaction and sales. This paper presents a prototype, which has been implemented for a clothing department store, and evaluates its acceptance with a focus group of shop assistants.

Keywords: Electronic Product Code (EPC); Mobile Information Systems; Near Field Communication; Retail Business

Citation: S. Karpischek, F. Resatsch, F. Michahelles, E. Fleisch, Mobile Sales Assistant - An NFC-based product information system for retailers, Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Near Field Communication - NFC’09, Austria, February 2009.

Download: [here]

Stephan is working on the Smart Product project : http://www.smartproducts-project.eu/

We encourage everyone interested in the topic of object-communication, smart products or Near Field Communication to either contact us or send comments via wordpress. We are looking forward to discussing ideas and concepts.

Do Point of Sale RFID-Based Information Services Make a Difference? Analyzing Consumer Perceptions for Designing Smart Product Information Services in Retail Business

In the Electronic Markets Journal. The full quotation and source can be found here.

The paper targets an enormously important question for retail businesses: does RFID make sense if I use it for customer information services. With the rise of Near Field Communication (NFC) or RFID-enabled mobile phones, this question becomes prevalent in terms of placing RFID tags on products. The question is: What product information is important for the consumer and especially for what products? Further we ask, if the notion of touch for NFC is considered important to consumers.

There was an increase in barcode-reading software in mobile phones such as the Google G1 or iPhone. The results described in the paper can also be transferred to these situations in which the barcode reader is used to obtain the product information.

The full abstract is here:

The increase in RFID implementation in retail allows the development of smart product information applications. However, literature describes only a few evaluations of RFID retail applications with real consumers. The question that arises is, whether such theoretically possible user-centric ubiquitous computing applications meet user needs and, if so, what method is best to investigate this? For our investigation, we developed a mobile phone application prototype based on Near Field Communication (NFC) to obtain product information at the Point of Sale (PoS). Following the ideas of Davis and Venkatesh (2004) and Abowd et al. (2005) with an extended pre-prototype approach for application development and evaluation, we conducted two focus groups (10 consumers, 10 sales assistants). While participants considered the NFC technology innovative and very easy to use-the need for further information at the PoS was low and varied between product categories. Our approach found that user opinions about paper-based concepts and real prototypes were different from the findings of Davis and Venkatesh (2004). This paper is the first to evaluate a smart information product system with an existing prototype and real consumers, as well as sales personnel. The findings contribute to the theory of ubiquitous computing by proposing a modified approach to evaluating user acceptance and to refining information system requirements for RFID-based smart products. The findings also reflect the response of sales personnel to RFID penetration in shops, suggest how mobile services can add user benefits, and help in the selection of what is the most beneficial information to present at the PoS.

The paper was one case study of my Ph.D. dissertation (Florian Resatsch, 2009). Feel free to contact me for any questions or information on the topics. Thank yous to Stephan Karpischek and Stephan Hamacher for the help in conducting the case study and to my co-authors for the millions of reviews.

here we go again. I will be giving a talk this Wednesday at the M2M preconference. The main event is described here. The preconference will adress the German community of RFID and machine-to-machine communication. The programme is available for download here: http://blog.mobileprosumer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/programm_m2m_vorkonf.pdf

I will present a few ideas on future RFID applications and how we can make use of Near Field Communication to create a migration path from todays infrastructure of mobile phone handsets on to an internet of things. The topic of the speech is “Do you RFID? – Innovative RFID-Anwendungen aus Sicht des Kunden“. It will be in German.

Date: October, 8th, 2008

Place: European TelematicsFactory, Helmholtzstr. 2-9, 10587 Berlin

If you find the time to step by, I am happy to talk about these ideas. Pls contact me if you have any questions.

All the best,

Florian

you can download my presentation from this week’s Future Store event here:

http://www.slideshare.net/resatsch/future-store-2008-florian-resatsch-servtag-slideshare-presentation/

Looking forward to your feedback. Just leave a comment. The presentation is in German.

All the best,

Florian

another speech is lined up. This time, I will be presenting at the Future Store in Toenisvorst (Hoehenhoefe 21, 47918 Toenisvorst).

The programm is available for download here: RFID im Fokus - Programm Flyer

My talk is entitled: “Zukunftsweisend: Near-Field-Communication-Anwendungen für den Handel“. I will present a few results from our focus group study of the Mobile Prosumer.

There will be interesting information during the whole day about the usage of RFID in retail. If you find the time, step by.

All the best,

Florian

We were also happy to see Thomas de Lazzari and the team of the University of Rome! Thank you guys.

The slides of our speech can be downloaded at Slideshare:

Designing NFC products

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me or Daniel.

All the best from Juan Les Pins, France

Florian Resatsch

The International Workshop on NFC 2009 is the first scientific workshop, which is focusing on the area of Near Field Communication (NFC).

Workshop date: February 24th, 2009

Location: Hagenberg, Austria 

More information: http://www.nfc-research.at/nfc09/

The submission deadline is October 1st, 2008 - so if you plan to submit, start early! All accepted papers will be published as ISBN proceedings published by IEEE Computer Society.

The Smart University program consists of 6 tracks of 2 days according to a workshop format which enables time for Q&A and for discussions, and a large interactivity between participants, teachers and lecturers.

More information can be found here:
http://www.strategiestm.com/conferences/smartuniv/08/index.htm 

We would be very happy to see you there!

Our topic will be from

2.00 pm – 3.30 pm with the title
Digital Product Design for NFC

After our lecture will be an industry round table:

• NFC: New services and integrators
• The future of NFC by the key players

The direct link: http://www.strategiestm.com/conferences/smartuniv/08/program_nfc.htm

If you have any questions, contact Florian Resatsch or Daniel Michelis.

we have added a presentation on slideshare about the mobile prosumer (MP) and mobile sales assistant (MSA). It includes a few slides about the concept and the project.

NFC Applications in Retail

All the best

Florian % Stephan