Abstract

The era of mobile communications and mobile services has begun. The ongoing mobile revolution has dramatically and fundamentally changed our daily lifestyles, and it will continue to do so in a foreseeable future. For the next generation, mobile service end users have more demands for such services. This thesis examines the challenging user perspectives in designing and developing high value added mobile services. The aim of this research is to develop reference models and elicit user requirements for 3G and beyond mobile services in order to improve the quality of mobile services.

This thesis first examines the existing architectures and models for high value added mobile services, followed by the contributions of the thesis. In this thesis, a Cyberworld model, which is a contribution to the WWRF reference modeling initiative and a specification of the WSI reference model, was developed and it serves as a basis for 3G and beyond mobile services design and development. A series of definitions of the Cyberworld model and a roadmap of the enabling technologies were also built up. The emphasis of this part is on how to describe and model user participation in mobile services. For this purpose, a model of the communication element to represent the components of the wireless world was created. Both static and dynamic reference modeling steps were established to better describe and understand user participation in mobile services. The validation was achieved through the CyPhone navigation mobile service. In order to enhance mobile service mobility, personalisation, and security, an ontology based model was developed to extend the Cyberworld model functionalities. The innovative ontology based mobile system will greatly increase service mobility, personalisation and security, thus improving the quality of mobile services. The ontology based model was illustrated and validated using a healthcare mobile service.

A Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach was adopted in this research in order to elicit, weigh and prioritise actual user requirements and link them to technical design requirements of mobile services. Traditionally QFD is employed in manufacturing industry. This approach is now extended to the mobile service industry for the first time. In this thesis, a detailed step by step QFD approach was proposed for designing high value added mobile services. As a result, the developed mobile services will better meet users' wants and needs which also means that the quality of mobile services will be significantly improved. The QFD approach was validated through a mobile e-learning service and another dedicated healthcare service for senior citizens.

Through development of reference models and examination of user requirements for 3G and beyond mobile services from user perspectives, this thesis contributes to the design and development of high value added mobile services.