User Integration in Two IoT Sustainable Services by Evaluation Grid Method

To meet the need for sustainable development, Taiwan has been spreading a network of micro-monitoring stations to measure the environmental quality in rivers and air to protect people from environmental pollution. As a result, more and more information technology companies develop Internet of Things (IoT) services for this job. However, most IoT services are screened out of the market because lacking design thinking. Therefore, including users' desires in IoT products and services is a critical determinant for their survival in this permanently changing market. Thus, this study proposed a systematic framework to identify the users' desires from different stakeholders to determine technological development. For this, we use the evaluation grid method (EGM) to explore the users' desires by a series of in-depth interviews and visualize the user's response as a hierarchical evaluation map of attraction. After that, an IoT prototype is built and used to capture the insightful feedback of respondents. Meanwhile, we adopt the minimum viable product (MVP) design principles to develop two prototypes that manage a wastewater treatment plant and household environment. Overall, this study proposes an applicable user integration procedure to help IT engineers develop the IoT for sustainable service. This study also confirms that the MVP method can help to accelerate user integration. We propose a service-oriented IoT architecture in technology development and develop a decision-making service of human dispatch in operating environmental facilities and a context-awareness service for environmental control.