Dynamic, Real time, On-demand Personalisation for Scaling (DROPS)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Surrey
Department Name: Business
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Stelmaszak M
(2021)
Data are in the Eye of the Beholder: Co-creating the Value of Personal Data
Stelmaszak M
(2023)
Data are in the eye of the beholder: Co-creation for sustainable personal data value
in Strategic Change
Kharlamov A
(2020)
The impact of servitization and digitization on productivity and profitability of the firm: a systematic approach
in Production Planning & Control
Del Vecchio M
(2020)
Improving productivity in Hollywood with data science: Using emotional arcs of movies to drive product and service innovation in entertainment industries
in Journal of the Operational Research Society
Davies P
(2020)
How additive manufacturing allows products to absorb variety in use: empirical evidence from the defence industry
in Production Planning & Control
Bradley P
(2020)
A framework to explore the functioning and sustainability of business models
in Sustainable Production and Consumption
| Description | Researchers have been examining personal data and how it can be used in personalisation, particularly in relation to the creation of eBooks for children. Our research focus has been examining digital business models and privacy, which together create trust. Our work has developed through a series of explorations. Firms need to collect personal information to provide personalized services and products. However, consumers may be reluctant to share their personal information due to privacy concerns. This is commonly referred as the personalization-privacy paradox. Firms need to deal with the paradox to gain benefits from personalization. Research has sought to address the question "How can an organisation manage the personalization-privacy paradox for digital services?". A study of personalization literature. Our findings suggest that the adoption of personalization should be based on the perceived value which can be improved through personalization. Personalized services need to be designed in the specific strategic context, and firms provide a clear privacy policy to reduce customers' privacy concerns. The presentation of personalized content, such as quality, forms and presentation timing, needs to be designed carefully to achieve the desirable effect. The dynamics of the value of personal data is used in the co-creation of value lacks empirical evidence. We conducted a case study of the development of a personalised e-book, speaking to the parties involved we found different perceptions of the value of personal data exist from the firm, intermediary and customer perspective. This difference can create tensions leading to different and sometimes opposing expectations of desired data characteristics. As people want and expect different things from the data, product, policy and managerial tensions emerge. We argue that customers' privacy concerns are strengthened by the power asymmetry between service providers and users. We consider the collection and monetization of personal data as a data supply chain along which data, rather than material artefacts, are moved and stored. In our work we explored the design of an extensible personal data store (ExtPDS), which was created under the EPSRC HAT project, and that may help to reduce power imbalance in the data supply chain of personal data. A number of functions were created that captured and manipulated personal data. Functions included sentiment analysis and word density. To test our functionality we implemented a prototype app that utilised these functions based on an individual's personal data, by capturing their twitter and calendar data. We then conducted an online survey to examine whether consumers' privacy concerns can be mitigated through the adoption of the proposed ExtPDS solution. Overall, the majority of respondents find the proposed solution helpful in reducing privacy concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic digital contact tracing (DCT) was identified as an important instrument in the containment toolkit of public health administrations. Several challenges are associated with DCT systems, including how they can be designed to achieve effectiveness and scalability while preserving the privacy and trust of users. We engaged in and won a Hackathon that proposed a privacy preserving DCT solution that utilised the DROPS learning and HAT technology. A solution was then built by partners at Case Western University, the ShareTrace app. We have been capturing the development of the product design to test if adequately resolves the tensions between technical effectiveness, scalability and privacy-preservation. |
| Exploitation Route | The work has built new understanding of the value and characteristics of personal data, particularly privacy and trust, and how they form part of a business model (Impact 1). We have shared this learning with our project partners and are working to share more broadly with both industrial and academic communities through ongoing presentations, publications (both academic and mainstream). We are taking this work further as part of new projects including with an international Rail company and over 34 firms as part of our new research centre. Our engagement with ShareTrace continues to provide insight into the design of personalised technologies (Impact 2). Our work has made us cognisant of the value of the experience to the user in practice as well as the financial worth of the offering (Impact 3). Further, research has identified the different ways that parties involved in provision and use of an eBook understand data differently, highlighting the personalisation privacy paradox and strategies to overcome it. |
| Sectors | Agriculture Food and Drink Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Financial Services and Management Consultancy Government Democracy and Justice Transport |
| Description | Insights from the work have been picked up to help Pickatale, children's book publisher, develop their offerings. They have been a very active and engaged partner on the project, and we are waiting to see exactly how our work impacts upon their design and offerings. We have seen a new offer being developed - Play Concepts Ltd - based on ideas from the work. The business is developing a reading and engagement platform for parents and guardians who are the primary caretakers of their children and wards, for children under the age of 12 (or before they go on to secondary school education). The business includes content creation and reading assessment application that assists parent users in creating stories using different kinds of media such as words, audio, images and video. The platform also includes a co-journaling application that chronicles the life journey of the child. This is a new application and we wait to see how it develops. During the COVID-19 pandemic digital contact tracing (DCT) was identified as an important instrument in the containment toolkit of public health administrations. Several challenges are associated with DCT systems, including how they can be designed to achieve effectiveness and scalability while preserving the privacy and trust of users. We engaged in and won a Hackathon that proposed a privacy preserving DCT solution that utilised the DROPS learning and HAT technology. A solution was then built by partners at Case Western University, the ShareTrace app. [https://www.sharetrace.org/]. We have been capturing the development of the product design to test if it adequately resolves the tensions between technical effectiveness, scalability and privacy-preservation. During the pandemic Surrey engaged in a second hackathon, resulting in the 'Opening Up After Lock Down' [O.U.A.L.D.] application, which was a design to help organisations safely reopen. The application drew on knowledge from the DROPS project to allow a many to one contract between provider and customer and provider and its partners, simplifying the relationships between parties e.g. shopping malls, their shop tenants, partners services and customers. The design was produced working with firm KroniKare, a provider of mass screening technology that enables checking for elevated temperature of people across a crowd, a key symptom of COVID19. To help address privacy concerns and manage GDPR the system drew on knowledge from DROPS, employing personal data accounts to protect privacy, whilst sharing meta-data. The work appear in the FT -https://www.ft.com/content/a9e9248e-a997-11ea-abfc-5d8dc4dd86f9 |
| First Year Of Impact | 2020 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural Economic |
| Description | Next Stage Digital Economy Centre in the Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE) |
| Amount | £3,816,713 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/T022485/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2020 |
| End | 06/2025 |
| Title | Hackathon; An anti-viral virtual hackathon. #hackfromhome |
| Description | A hackathon (derived from the terms hack and marathon) is a highly engaging, continuous event in which programmers and others (interface designers, graphic designers and others) collaborate intensively in small groups in a limited amount of time to produce working software prototypes. They have two distinguishing characteristics: they are technical and they are events limited by time with the object of producing a technical artefact. Hack from Home brought together 822 technology professionals to build health and health technology applications, ranging from the accurate modelling of refugee infection to traffic-lighting in community exposure. A positive, supportive, and impact-oriented community, it has made significant strides towards helping citizens, health professionals, and the international public adjust to life and work fighting the disease. I acted as both a mentor and participant - supporting teams in forming, and shaping a team more closely myself. 822 participants took part. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | An anti-viral virtual hackathon, #hackfromhome, was organised with support from the project. The project I proposed, Health Traffic Light, sought to develop a contact tracing app that was privacy preserving. This was a novel proposition at the time, with only China having discussion of an app. I formed a team and an MVP was developed. The project won the event and was taken forward by the team members from Case Western University, who developed it into ShareTrace.org, a fully functional sharetrace application. The method was interesting as it gave rise to a number of additional applications and designs, rapidly creating novel and innovative solutions to problems faced. |
| URL | https://www.hackfromhome.com/ |
| Description | Bid for Next Stage Digital Economy Centre in the Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE) |
| Organisation | University of Surrey |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I have been collaborating with Prof John Collomosse from Surrey Centre for Vision Speech and Signal Processing. I have particularly been explaining our work on business models and value in the digital domain arising from the HAT/CONTRIVE/DROPS project. This work has contributed to a bid to form a centre at Surrey university, in partnership with previous HAT project colleagues at Edinburgh University. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Prof John Collomosse from Surrey Centre for Vision Speech and Signal Processing is leading the bid to bring a research centre to Surrey. Their expertise includes depth knowledge of distributed ledger technologies. |
| Impact | We have submitted a bid to EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Centre call. The bid made it through the first round, and following interview is currently shortlisted and awaiting funding decision. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Blockchain visibility and trust in food supply |
| Organisation | University of Bath |
| Department | School of Management |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with PGR in Business School at Bath University to help with research to examine blockchain and how it helps with trust and privacy. Building on our insights on trust and privacy from this project I was asked to support work by a PGR at Bath, Mike Rogerson. I have supported him in developing a piece of research into blockchain and how it can be used to develop trust in supply chains in the agrifood industry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Mike (University of Bath) developed the case research. |
| Impact | We have written a paper that will publish soon in Supply Chain Management: An International Journal |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Collaboration with Dr Phillip Davies, University of Reading |
| Organisation | University of Reading |
| Department | Henley Business School |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I have briefed Dr Davies on the project and engaged him in the broader ideas. We have visited Kent University to meet the team and discuss engagement further. We have worked together to produce a paper on additive manufacture and systems theory in his domain of military defense in order to transfer the knowledge into our domain of the OMMS project. I am providing my knowledge on service and servitization as the broader system forms part of a service. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Dr Davies brings great expertise in general modular systems theory. The construct will be useful in helping ensure we retain modularity of the product as we develop it, as later upgrades of modules is simpler and cheaper if we maintain separation and avoid close coupling of the modules. |
| Impact | This collaboration bridges business and systems engineering, as well as involving additive manufacture. To date with have produced conference paper for Spain Servitization conference and a paper for PPC on his work. We are now developing the paper for OMMS that shows how system design may follow systems theory. If the partnership develops as we hope we will contract for confidentiality as part of the collaboration accordingly. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | "Data Science of Hollywood" Research Seminar, |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Invited seminar at Henley Business School, University of Reading. Seminar was well attended, with 30+ people, mainly academic, though some PGR and doctoral students. Attendees came from many research disciplines and asked many questions on process, methods and potential for them to develop and apply the ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | "Supply Chain Digitalisation", Guest Lecturer, Strathclyde University, January 29th 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited to present work to the MSc students in Digital Marketing Management at Strathclyde University business school. The students were international and many had already had business experience. I presented the work on IoT and supply, updated to include insights on privacy, security and business models from recent findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | "Supply Chain Digitalisation", Guest Lecturer, Strathclyde University, January 31st 2020. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited to present work to the MSc students in Digital Marketing Management at Strathclyde University business school. The students were international and many had already had business experience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Attended the annual Entertainment Data Analytics Conference at The Lowry in Manchester, Thursday 6th and Friday 7th of June. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Organised by the BBC, the event draws a select group of data analytics experts from the leading global media firms. This is a closed event for practice that I was invited to. I was there to engage business to gain support for the DROPS project and seek engagement in our broader activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Chaired the interactive session at the Data Science, Personalisation, and Responsibility Workshop at the Alan Turing Institute. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On May 14th, 2019 the Alan Turing Institute is organized a one-day workshop on Data Science, Personalisation and Responsibility with particular focus on entertainment, media, and retail sectors. Using AI to personalise services generates substantial consumer benefits, tailoring services/goods/information to their interests, delivered continuously and conveniently. Yet, the example of Cambridge Analytica's political microtargeting using bulk-harvested Facebook profiles highlights how data-driven personalisation could be employed to manipulate individuals at scale. Consequently, there have been growing concerns about privacy, highlighting the importance of responsible use of data-driven business models. One of the major tasks for current businesses is striking a balance between using data science to provide personalised services to consumers and doing this responsibly. This has been reflected in legislation with the current GDPR regulations requiring companies to learn how to continue to improve their business models whilst maintaining customer wellbeing. So, we are asking how the use of data-analytics in creative industries and retail are being successfully deployed to deliver personalized services to customers in responsible and ethical ways? I chaired an interactive session where participants were asked to discuss their current practice and describe the key challenges they faced. The audience of leading practitioners gave us great insight into the state of the art and research we might take up to help competitiveness. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | CoChair Personal Data: Analytics and Management minitrack at HICSS 2021 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Created and CoChaired the Personal Data: Analytics and Management minitrack at HICSS 2021. HICSS is a leading global conference on information systems with over 6000 scholars from 78 countries. I helped organise this special track which brought in papers in the area of interest. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://hicss.hawaii.edu/ |
| Description | CoChair of the May 20-22, 2019: Venice, Italy. The 6th Competitive Advantage in the Digital Economy (CADE) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We brought together 30 international researchers and practitioners interested in personal data and Cyber Security. The group both presented and discussed issues pertinent to the DROPS project and its underlying technologies. Agreement was made during the conference to bid for more work and also to co-author papers, contributing to new knowledge. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/mediacentre/wmgevents/cade2019 |
| Description | FASS Festival of Research - Keynote Speaker - |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a talk done "live" over Zoom to close the 2021 Faculty of Social Science Festival of Science. I spoke about the importance of collaboration, giving an overview of my projects. A copy of the talk is available here https://youtu.be/azJqb8kCQK8 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://issuu.com/universityofsurrey/docs/fass_festival_of_research_programme_2021 |
| Description | Improving productivity in Hollywood using data science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | YouTube presentation of our paper "Improving productivity in Hollywood with data science: Using emotional arcs of movies to drive product and service innovation in entertainment industries". This video is used to share the paper with students and general public. It also helps engage academics, and I get invited to do the talk at seminars. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/rfa66Lv_Lzs |
| Description | Interview with Open Business Council to talk about research - focus on blockchain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | o focus about background and your profile o your academic work o About your views and work on Digital Economy Entrepreneurship and Innovation o About EPSRC Centre for Decentralised Digital Economy [DECaDE] o How do you see technology and digital transformation o How do you see Blockchain and its paper in society and economy o Blockchain for good - centralised versus decentralised economy and the principles of a full digital society? o How can Tech4All, Tech4Good, AI4Good Support CSR and CDR and aa better society |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://youtube.com/c/DinisGuarda |
| Description | Oxford Union Society - "Silos in Industry & The Power of Decentralisation" series of talks |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talk primarily on blockchain in supply chain, but questions included all aspects related to privacy, security and digital economy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.oxford-union.org/node/2295 |
| Description | Presentation at 8th International Conference on Business Servitization, 21-22 November, San Sebastian, Spain |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is work that I supported, following on from the DROPS project where I met the lead author. We discussed how data management makes part of a modular system and have begun collaboration. This is the first output based on Dr Davies work. The theory has implications for the EPSRC DROPS, OMMS and Transdisciplinary Design Engineering project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/853861/ |
| Description | Presentation at Data and Policy conference, London June 11-12 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of work on privacy and personalisation which engaged audience and sparked debate and questions afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/id/eprint/41219 |