m:Ciudad: enabling end‐user mobile service creation

Abstract

Purpose -Mobile computing enables end-users to create small services on their mobiles and share valuable and context-aware information with others. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a platform for end-user generated mobile services -so-called microservices. Design/methodology/approach -As a key component the authors present a microservice description language for user-driven mobile service creation and platform-independent service execution and rendering. The paper also gives insight into the authors' visual authoring tool. The chosen design approach is evaluated in two phases: an intermediate evaluation with a small hands-on trial and an online survey; and a final laboratory test with 24 test users in total. Findings -The paper provides empirical insights about the methods and motivations of end-users creating small mobile services. The main purposes of service creation would be mostly to exchange information, stay in contact, and just for fun (on the basis of non-commercial use). The evaluations also indicate the visual drag and drop approach of putting service blocks together as being the most favored in terms of user satisfaction. Originality/value -The concepts and findings introduced in this paper will help in designing mobile service authoring environments, which is appealing to software communities/vendors and mobile network operators. The presented platform is, to the authors' knowledge, the first designed and implemented infrastructure enabling end-user mobile service creation.

Auf dem Weg zu semantischen APIs für Forschungsdatendienste

“…This would also be in agreement with other trends in the services area, e.g. microservices they have a very narrow focus -typically very domain-specific ones, but with semantic APIs that enable easy integration into more complex services that, in turn, can be modified, re-created and re-published by the developers as well as the end users (Davies et al, 2011).…”

uRun

“…The m:Ciudad project (http://www. mciudad-fp7.eu/) aimed to provide 'a service architecture, a set of mobile tools and a platform to allow users to create focused, knowledgebased mobile micro-services, which are called m:Ciudad U+ Services' (Davies et al, 2008). Similar to uService, m:Ciudad followed the mobile service prosumer paradigm and can be seen as a predecessor of uService.…”