Understanding the diversity of services based on users' identities

Abstract

Internet services involve complex networks of relationships among users and providers - human and automated - acting in many different capacities under interconnected and dynamic contexts. Due to the vast amount of information and services available, it is not easy for novice users to identify the right services that fit his purposes and preferences best. At the same time, it is not easy for service providers to build a service with a customizable set of features that satisfies the most people. This paper proposes to further extend the strategic actors modeling framework i* to analyze the diverse needs of users by modeling explicitly the personal characteristics, organizational positions, and service related roles. We assume that service users' needs and preferences are determined by their personal background, organizational roles, and the immediate operational context in combination. In this way, the origin of the diversity of service needs, quality preferences, and usage constraints, can be ascribed and used as a basis to make rationale selection from currently available types of services, and to reconfigure service interfaces and structures. Example usage scenarios of web services are used to illustrate the proposed approach. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.