Abstract
Internet of things currently provides a lot of benefits for users and the increase of digital systems (services and products) are impacting users lives as they interact with them. The increasing interaction with these services requires a lot of use of mobile devices (interaction through mobile Apps) or PCs (web-apps, programmes, portals, etc). Improving the UI (User Interface) can provide a very positive impact on users, and therefore add value to IoT products or services. In a world where users will be interacting with so many things connected to the internet, the interaction with them must be as natural, fluent, simple, comfortable and healthy as possible if we want the products or services developed to be successful and adopted by target users. The progress of Artificial Intelligence and automatic deployment Cloud Service applications that are currently provided by companies like IBM (open source and on-demand) can be applied to IoT projects to create a Conversational User Interface that can be a very valuable feature to any IoT service or product to be developed. This is an impact study developed in collaboration with IBM Global Business Services (formed by business, technology, design and industry consultants to help clients design, develop and manage businesses). The objective of this analysis for IBM GBS iX Studio (department under GBS dedicated to user interaction consulting, project offering and clients engagement) is to understand how IBM Watson technologies can be applied to connected devices, and what applications and impacts on users this can have. By better understanding how a conversational user interface is implemented and its applications and benefits to users, iX Studio can create an offering to extend business opportunities in IoT market in the future. For UPM university, this study can serve as an initial approach to introduce these technologies in the Master in Internet of Things programme, in order to teach students how to apply this knowledge in their future projects along their careers in IoT industry. The university can take advantage of automated software deployment to accelerate the understanding of the different technologies and provide further knowledge to IoT students without compromising programme timings of the master.
