AN APPROACH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT

OF DOOH-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Pietro D’ambrosio

, Filomena Ferrucci

, Federica Sarro

and Maurizio Tucci

NET FIRST srl – Salerno, Italy

University of Salerno,Via Ponte don Melillo, 84084, Fisciano (SA), Italy

Keywords: DOOH-oriented Information Systems, Development Methodology, Autonomic Computing, Context

Awareness.

Abstract: The last years are characterised by an increasing demand of using digital services and multimedia content

“out of home”. This poses new challenges to software factories in terms of integration and extension

systems. In this paper, we report on an industrial research project realized by some ICT companies together

with some researchers of the University of Salerno. The goal of the project was to define a new approach for

developing Enterprise systems able to integrate traditional applications with Digital Out Of Home (DOOH)

extensions. The experience was carried out defining a methodology and some tools to develop such type of

systems in an industrial context. The proposed approach was evaluated carrying out two case studies.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the last years there is an increasing demand for

using digital services and contents “out of home”.

Hardware and software solutions that allow users to

interact with content distribution systems in public

environment (e.g., streets, stations, airports,

shopping centres) are classified as a new family of

systems named “Digital Out Of Home” (DOOH). In

market areas where the competitiveness and

attention to the customer is very high, such as the

financial/banking and tourism, it has been

recognized that these new ways of consuming digital

services can be crucial for the continuity and

expansion of the business. This results in a growing

attention to this kind of products and in an emerging

need to evolve the companies’ information systems

to integrate DOOH features, giving rise to a new

kind of systems that we name DOOH-Oriented

Enterprise Information Systems (DOOHIS). Some

features characterize this kind of systems, such the

use of multi interaction devices, multimedia content,

multimodal interaction, context awareness. Indeed,

the ICT technologies advances of last years make

available on the market a great variety of multimedia

devices (interactive showcases, interactive tables,

virtual or augmented reality systems, etc...) that

allow forms of interaction with users more and more

fascinating. Moreover, these systems are supposed

to execute in a ubiquitous, heterogeneous

infrastructure (possibly mobile) and in different

execution environments or contexts. They should be

able to sense the context in which they are executing

and change their behaviour in response to external

changes (Inverardi and Tivoli, 2009). Thus,

traditional information systems have to be integrated

with new "channels", new devices and

environmental sensors.

This poses new challenges in terms of

integration and extension. Indeed, DOOH features

are usually realized employing custom technologies,

which make difficult the integration with pre-

existing information systems. Moreover, the strong

demand of these systems forces software factories to

redefine their development process to adapt it to the

complexity of these new products. On the same

time, companies have to deal with crucial issues

critically increased by the current economic scenario

and the high competitiveness requested by the

globalized market, such as:

 The production of DOOHISs is very expensive

since the cost to develop a system exponentially

grows with the increase of system complexity.

 The market sector is characterised by high

competitiveness and frequently changes in rules.

326

D’ambrosio P., Ferrucci F., Sarro F. and Tucci M. (2010).

AN APPROACH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOOH-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS.

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Information Systems Analysis and Speciﬁcation, pages

326-331

 SciTePress

 The reuse of software component is very low.

This is mainly due to the fact that often the cost

of adaptation of these components is too high.

 The strong dynamism of the market. This

phenomenon forces ICT companies to a dynamic

organization of their staff, also considering the

opportunity to take the form of "virtual

enterprise".

Starting from the above considerations an industrial

research project has been jointly carried out by some

Italian software companies and some academic

researchers of University of Salerno. The aims of the

project were to define a new approach able to reduce

development costs for DOOHISs and at the same

time improve their quality. The critical aspects to be

addressed to achieve these goals were:

 Support the component software reuse;

 Reduce domain application knowledge transfer

risks, such as misunderstanding system

requirements;

 Automate a significant part of the development

process without missing the possibility to

manually realize integrations and modifications.

Thus, we defined an approach, named EMAF

(Enterprise Multilevel Applicative Framework)

which is specialized for the development of

DOOHISs. In particular, to realize such systems we

proposed an architecture (i.e., EMAF Architecture),

a development methodology (i.e., the EMAF

Methodology) and a set of tools which support the

stakeholders in the various phases of the proposed

development process. The approach was employed

to develop two information systems for two different

application domains, namely financial and tourism.

The remainder of the paper is organized as

follows. Section 2 provides a background on DOOH

applications and highlights issues and challenges in

integrating them in an enterprise information system.

Section 3 describes the approach we propose. In

Section 4 we describe the two case studies related to

the use of the proposed approach and the lessons

learned. Some final remarks and future work

conclude the paper.

2 DOOH-ORIENTED

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Hardware and software solutions that allow users to

interact with content distribution systems in public

environment (e.g., streets, stations, airports,

shopping centres) are classified as “Digital Out Of

Home” (DOOH) applications. The first kind of

DOOH-applications was the Digital Signage, ideated

to reduce production and distribution costs of paper

advertisements in busy environments. The

technology and the habits in using such type of

systems are evolved quickly to the point to introduce

new forms of communication with users and content

fruition. At the same time it has been recognized the

effectiveness of these systems in improving

emotional involvement, attracting user attention and

influencing its purchase decision (increases up to

75% were observed) and, more generically,

increasing a positive perception of the environment

and the brand.

All this has encouraged the ICT sector to search

for applications, technologies and modality of use

more and more involving and spectacular with the

aim to directly interact with the consumer by

delivering content personalized and adaptable on the

basis of the current time or the specific fruition

location. Moreover, the opportunity to reach specific

customers in a specific moment has also allowed for

customizing and personalizing information and

making more comfortable the fruition of services.

Thus, the use of DOOH solutions to communicate

and to interact with consumers in an urban context

or in public environments offers some important

advantages in terms of effectiveness and economy of

management. Furthermore it allows delivering new

services, creating new opportunities of interaction

with consumers and new opportunities of business.

The majority of DOOH solutions are able to

manage networks of different devices, such as LCD

displays, video-walls, and PDAs. Thus, there is the

need to realize a sort of dynamic content fruition that

allows differentiating the content and the planning

for groups of devices, typology of device,

geographical area or a single device. These

advanced systems should also be able to acquire data

from existing information systems and to plan

actions based on specific events (e.g., activated by

temporal advance, by local devices or by particular

information received from the environment). For

instance, in the case of an airport, this feature should

allow us to relate the displaying of a particular

advertisement/information or the start of a specific

application to an event such as the opening or the

closing of a gate.

The extreme variety of multimedia devices (each

one characterized by specific features) introduces

new challenges in terms of ability in using them and

integration with specialized applications. These

difficulties together with the need to contain the

development costs determine that in the majority of

present solutions the interaction with users is

AN APPROACH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOOH-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS

327

PHASE1

PHASE2PHASE3

Applicative

Domain

Expert

Developer

EMAF

specialist

IT Analyst

Graphic

Designer

(1). Functional requirements elicitation

and logic interface definition

(2). Non-functional

requirements

elicitation

(3). Graphic interface

and layout definition

Authoring Environment

(4). Automatic generation of target system

components based on

transactional models, reference architecture,

and information gatherde in phase 1

(5). Business kogic and database development,

service implementation, system testing

Generation Environment

Development Environment

PHASE1

PHASE2PHASE3

Applicative

Domain

Expert

Developer

EMAF

specialist

IT Analyst

Graphic

Designer

(1). Functional requirements elicitation

and logic interface definition

(2). Non-functional

requirements

elicitation

(3). Graphic interface

and layout definition

Authoring Environment

(4). Automatic generation of target system

components based on

transactional models, reference architecture,

and information gatherde in phase 1

(5). Business kogic and database development,

service implementation, system testing

Generation Environment

Development Environment

(1). Functional requirements elicitation

and logic interface definition

(2). Non-functional

requirements

elicitation

(3). Graphic interface

and layout definition

Authoring Environment

(4). Automatic generation of target system

components based on

transactional models, reference architecture,

and information gatherde in phase 1

(5). Business kogic and database development,

service implementation, system testing

Generation Environment

Development Environment

Figure 1: The proposed methodology.

managed only by dedicated stations which run

specific applications. Moreover, few differentiations

of the content are realized usually based on static

information such as typologies of terminals or their

locations. It is obvious that the traditional forms of

content management based on palimpsests and

planning become inadequate in presence of complex

environments or content characterised by high

variability. Moreover, it is worth noting that to

realize effective content and schedules, an editorial

structure composed by people with different and

specialized know-how and skills is required with

consequent increasing of costs and operational

complexity.

Thus, the challenges that are currently presented

to the industry of DOOHISs concern the

introduction of "intelligence" in the management of

complex terminal networks with the goals to

maximize the characteristics of content geolocation

and context awareness, to reduce the costs of

planning of the program schedule, to improve the

interactivity with users and to support a greater and

easier integration with external systems and

technologies.

3 THE PROPOSED APPROACH

To address the issues highlighted in the previous

section we propose a solution where a DOOHIS is

formed by two different components: an

“intelligent” DOOH-application and a web

application. The former acts as container, while the

latter is a traditional web application that can be

executed also out the container. In particular, the

DOOH-system manages the devices and sensors

Domain Knowledge

Technical Skills

EMAF

Skills

Application

Domain

Expert

• Functional requirements

...elicitation

• Functional analysis

• Interface definition

• Rapyd prototyping

EMAF

Designer

• Automatic generation of

..system components based

..on transaction models, a ..

..reference architecture, and

..information gathered in .. ..

..the prevoiuse phase.

Technical

Expert

• Business logic and

..database.

• Sevice deployement

• System testing

Developer

PHASE ROLES

•Non-functional requirements

..elicitation

• Graphical Layout definition

Domain Knowledge

Technical Skills

EMAF

Skills

Application

Domain

Expert

• Functional requirements

...elicitation

• Functional analysis

• Interface definition

• Rapyd prototyping

EMAF

Designer

• Automatic generation of

..system components based

..on transaction models, a ..

..reference architecture, and

..information gathered in .. ..

..the prevoiuse phase.

Technical

Expert

• Business logic and

..database.

• Sevice deployement

• System testing

Developer

PHASE ROLES

•Non-functional requirements

..elicitation

• Graphical Layout definition

Figure 2: The methodology hourglass.

network and makes actions on the basis of a defined

plan or triggered by specific events and context

changes recognized by a smart engine. The web

application when it is executed in the DOOH

container is capable of interacting with the

environment and sending events-messages to the

DOOH-system. This event-message can be used to

activate computing processes, modify a previously

defined plan, or, more in general, modify the state of

the system.

As an example, let us consider a video-wall

placed in a strategic point to display a multimedia

show composed by videoclip, news, advertisement

or tourist information. This show can vary on the

basis of a specific happening, such as the

identification of an RFID tag contained in a tourist

card, the recognition of people standing in front of

the video-wall and watching the show, a specific

request (e.g., a button pressed by the user). Indeed,

the DOOH-system is capable to capture several

events and to activate for each one a specific web

application that provides the user with a set of

functionality related to the profile identified.

Moreover, when the application is activated the

system can choose how display it on the basis of the

capabilities (e.g., display size) of the device on

which it will be visualized and the priority given to

the other running applications. Thus, in the reported

example the DOOH-system recognizes the need to

start a specific application and decides the way to

present it to the final user, while the web application

manages the interactive functionalities.

3.1 The EMAF Methodology

To design and develop the described kind of DOOH-

oriented information systems we devised a

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“multilevel methodology” characterised by the

subdivision of the activities in some levels and by a

high involvement of non-ICT stakeholders. The

proposed subdivision let each professional figure

involved in the development process to design a

specific view of the system (e.g., graphic interface,

menu and interaction style, business logic, ...) using

the tools and the interface metaphors more suitable

for his/her role. This approach reduces the effort

needed to transfer the knowledge from experts of the

application domain to technology specialists.

Moreover, it has the appreciable advantage to reduce

the risk of misunderstanding system requirements

allowing an immediate validation of the target

system behaviour (interface, page layout, glossary,

etc...).

The proposed methodology decomposes the

development process in three macro phases (see

Figure 1):

1. Systematic elicitation of functional requirements,

project design choices, interfaces, business logic,

etc. These tasks require the involvement of

several professional figures (application domain

experts, analyst, graphic designer, multimedia

experts, communication experts,...) and are

supported by some authoring tools.

2. Automatic generation of software code (i.e.

skeleton) on the basis of models and reference

architecture and framework;

3. Manual fulfilment of skeletons realized by

developers on specific “change points”.

Figure 2 shows how the competences are distributed

during the software development process. In

particular, the middle point of the hourglass

highlights a significant reduction of the professional

figures with specific technical skills needed to the

software factory to realize the products. On the

contrary, there is an increasing involvement of

application domain experts and system analysts and

developers. This aspect is crucial to facilitate a

dynamic organization of project teams and to share

factory infrastructure between different companies.

3.2 The EMAF System

The EMAF system we designed to support the

proposed methodology is composed by several

components each one belonging to one of these

subsystems: authoring tool, automatic generation

tool, run-time environment (see Figure 3). The

authoring system is composed by two subsystems:

the DOOH Authoring System (DAS) and the

Services Authoring System (SAS). The first is used

to define the DS/DOOH container, while the latter is

used to define the Web application. In particular,

DAS (Figure 4) is composed by two main

components: (i) the Multimedia Management

Console (MMC) employed to manage multimedia

resources, to define program schedules and content

plans for the various system channels and (ii) the

Layout Management System (LMS) employed to

define the multimedia container layout and to

identify the area where players able to show specific

content are executed.

On the other hand, SAS (Figure 5) provides

stakeholders with a set of authoring tools which

allow defining web application structure and the

related logic aggregating information coming from

multiple sources. Indeed, several stakeholders can be

involved in the development process (multilevel

approach) and each of them can use a specific tool to

work with the system representation more

appropriate to his/her role.

Figure 3: The proposed system.

Authoring System

Multimedia Application

Layout, Areas, Channels

DOOH Designer

Data Base

Multimedia Contents

Mutlimedia Content

ManagementSystem

Definition of program

schedules and plans

Media Expert

EMAF ICT

Specialist

Events Rules

Actions

Autonomic

Engine

Cooperative Agents Network (“Sensors”)

AG AG AG AG

Run Time Environment

Applicative Service (“Effectors”)

Plan &

Analysis

Multimedia Player

(DOOH Client )

Content Distribution

for DOOHClients

Authoring System

Multimedia Application

Layout, Areas, Channels

DOOH Designer

Data Base

Multimedia Contents

Mutlimedia Content

ManagementSystem

Definition of program

schedules and plans

Media Expert

EMAF ICT

Specialist

Events Rules

Actions

Autonomic

Engine

Cooperative Agents Network (“Sensors”)

AG AG AG AG

Run Time Environment

Applicative Service (“Effectors”)

Plan &

Analysis

Multimedia Player

(DOOH Client )

Content Distribution

for DOOHClients

Figure 4: The DOOH Authoring System (DAS).

AN APPROACH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOOH-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS

329

As an example, Figure 5 shows three authoring

tools employed to define the graphic, functional, and

technological features of the DOOH-oriented system

to be realized. All the information produced by the

authoring tools is stored in a centralized repository.

This information is used by the generation system to

automatically develop pieces of code (i.e., skeletons)

that have to be completed by developers to realize

system functionality. It is worth to note that the

automatic generation is accomplished exploiting

component models that are modifiable. This

simplifies the system adaptation when the software

factory needs to make changes or the use of new

standards or technologies is imposed by the

customer.

Models

Authoring System

Functional Level

Software

Analyst

Authoring System

Tecnical Level

System Analyst

Data Base

Models

Generation System

(automatically produces software code pieces modifiable by developers)

Developer

Authoring System

Graphic Level

Graphic Designer

Reference

and

Architecture

Framework

Run Time System

Comp Comp Comp CompCompComp

Predefined components

Models

Authoring System

Functional Level

Software

Analyst

Authoring System

Tecnical Level

System Analyst

Data Base

Models

Generation System

(automatically produces software code pieces modifiable by developers)

Developer

Authoring System

Graphic Level

Graphic Designer

Reference

and

Architecture

Framework

Run Time System

Comp Comp Comp CompCompComp

Predefined components

Figure 5: The Service Authoring System (SAS).

The run-time system is composed by some

reusable components and by all the components

produced by developers starting from the skeletons

generated by the system. In particular, based on the

reference architecture and framework the following

components were employed:

 A component for the dynamic rendering of

interfaces which manages at run-time the

building of a customized layout for specific users

and channels.

 An autonomic engine (IBM, 2006) (Muller et al.,

2009) (Brittenham et al., 2007) which makes

decisions on the basis of a logic defined by

events, rules and actions. In particular, this

engine is able to monitor the events collected by

a network of cooperative agents (i.e.,

environmental sensors and interactive devices)

and perform the appropriate actions (i.e., execute

a specific application services);

 A distribution system which allocates content

and applications on the devices belonging to the

DOOH network on the basis of program

schedules and content plans defined by the

Multimedia Management Console.

4 CASE STUDIES

To evaluate the cost/effectiveness of the proposed

approach we carried out two case studies. In

particular, the proposed approach was applied to

develop two DOOHISs for two different application

domains, namely financial and tourism domains.

Indeed, we believe that in these sectors the

application of DOOHISs will grow in the next years.

The first case study is related to a system

developed with the aim to improve the relationship

between a bank and its customers. Indeed, we

developed a DOOHIS to manage the internal and

external communication and provided services to the

customers through new interaction modalities. In

particular, the bank was equipped with I/O devices

and environmental sensors which provided the

DOOHIS with the information needed to make

decisions and supply the appropriate services to each

customer. The I/O devices represent

“communication channels” and for each device

several DOOH functionalities and application

services were developed. As an example we

introduced the use of an interactive totem which

displayed information and multimedia contents

following the programs schedule defined by the

Multimedia Management Console. The

environmental sensors allow the system to recognise

whether an user is near the totem and a face

detection algorithm is employed to count how many

users are seeing the display. Moreover RFID tags

contained in customer card, allow the system to

univocally identify the customers. This information,

together with the ones gathered by environmental

sensors (e.g., number of people present in the bank

office, current day, time) are exploited by the

autonomic engine to decide the more suitable

contents to show through the totem suggesting

specific contents for the customers and providing

him/her with interactive functionalities.

The second DOOHIS was designed to meet the

growing demands of digital tourism products,

especially for tourism service customizations and

integrations of public services (e.g., security, health,

transport) with tourist information in urban areas.

Indeed, such a system can be used in a city to

manage the network of sensors and devices (e.g.,

multimedia Totem, videowall) employed to offer a

service to a final user (i.e., a tourist). The user can

interact with the system in various way using his/her

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device (e.g., PDA, cellular phone, netbook) or the

devices placed in the environment and can use

information and services provided in push or pull

mode. Differently from the first case study, we

extended the type of devices employed to access to

the services and experimented interface metaphors

to deal with different devices. Moreover, a web

application for a tourist assistance centre was

developed employing the proposed authoring tools.

The application let to collect and manage the

requests coming from tourists or a supplier network.

The case studies played an important role in our

project since let us to evaluate the industrial

employment of the proposed approach and to study

the impact that the proposed methodology and

systems had on the software factories organization.

To this aim, the project team was composed by

people coming from the different companies which

took part to the industrial research project. This let

us to observe the learning times and the

methodology effectiveness in a heterogeneous and

“not yet consolidated” context. The case studies

allowed us to derive the following remarks.

A successfully involvement of non-ICT

stakeholders was observed in requirements

elicitation and user interface definition phases.

Indeed, the involved non-ICT stakeholders found

very easy the use of the proposed models.

A consistent reduction of development and

testing time was obtained (i) employing a reference

framework, (ii) defining the application logic on a

set of rules, services and service workflow, and (iii)

automatically generating skeletons for software

components which have to be fulfill by developers.

Moreover, we observed that the second case

study was conducted more easily and quickly than

the first one. This was due to the reuse of several

components. Indeed, a reduction of lines of code

construction to realize system functionality, were

observed.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In the paper we have highlighted the challenges that

software companies have to address for the

development of a new typology of information

systems (DOOHISs), whose demand is highly

increasing in the last years and that provide great

opportunities for business and services. The specific

contributions of the paper are:

 The definition of a development methodology for

DOOHISs;

 The development of a tool based on the proposed

methodology, compatible with a reference

software architecture and a reference functional

framework;

 The validation of the proposed approach in two

application domains, namely financial and

tourism, to evaluate whether it is cost/effective in

an industrial reality. The demonstrative systems

for financial and tourism application domains

were characterised by the integration of some

application services in a network of devices with

interactive digital functionality.

The results achieved were encouraging and

motivate further experimentations of the proposed

approach with the aim to refine and transfer it to the

industrial context. The ICT companies that took part

into the industrial research project are introducing in

their development processes some authoring

components. Systematically collecting feedbacks

from stakeholders and comparing them with data

acquired by company reporting systems is very

useful to have an evaluation of the advantages that

derive by employing the proposed methodology.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research has also been carried out thanks to the

“Misura 3.17- POR Campania 2000/2006. Progetto

Metadistretto del settore ICT” funded by the

following partners: DMI Unisa, Gruppo Net Srl, Net

First Srl, Acube Lab Srl.

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