1 Effective communication in organizations: Issues regarding choices between F2F, voice-telephony, IM, email and real-time video Lill Kristiansen, Dept. of Telematics, ntnu Egil Østhus, Tandberg
Mar 19, 2016
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Effective communication in organizations: Issues regarding choices between
F2F, voice-telephony, IM, email and real-time video
Lill Kristiansen, Dept. of Telematics, ntnuEgil Østhus, Tandberg
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What is Tandberg?
From Tandberg.com: ” TANDBERG is the market share leader and the fastest
growing company in the video conferencing industry. We hold the highest market share for video infrastructure products as well as video endpoints, whether measured in terms of revenue or unit volume”
From Aftenposten 14th Febr. 2010: All new employees:
3 days course in culture Picture: From night event in
Vigelandsparken (Monolitten) 1640 employees in 49 countries,
500 in Oslo (Lysaker)
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About the presenters
Lill Kristiansen Former employed in Telenor R&D and Ericsson (IP-
telephony) Now prof. in Telematics
Teaching now: ttm4130: Service intelligence and mobility ttm7: Convergence
Research: Technical research (incl. Techno-Business relations) research on coordination and communication from a ’softer’ side
(CSCW:Computer Supported Coop Work) Not representing Tandberg, indepent academic person
Egil Østhus, MSc. In telematics, 2005 Since then employed in Tandberg with SIP, UC, .. See also: http://www.komtek.ntnu.no/komtekerejobb_egil
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About the presentation
Background material Some existing applications and prototypes
On ’soft issues’ Organizational and human issues, some concepts and
theories Technology and infrastructure:
Standardization vs proprietary solutions? Showing the film: PDA in Hospital Presentation of two solutions ENME and PPCom We invite you to work out scenarios / business plan for
Simple-PPCom
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Acronyms: a few from technology... BT Bluetooth (Blåtann in Scandinavian language) CMC Computer Mediated Communication F2F Face to Face FMC Fixed Mobile Convergence IETF Internet Engineering Task Force (std.body, IP)
(mostly ignoring charging and QoS) IM Instant Messaging IMS Multimedia Subsystem
(based on SIP, but with a business modell more similar toGSM, defined in 3GPP /ETSI (who also defined GSM)
MMoIP Multimedia over IP (or VVoIP with video and more,as we will be using today (hopefully!))
QoS Quality of Service (e.g. Reservation of bandwidth or radio resources etc. related to charging)
SD Service Discovery SIP Session Initiation protocol (’call setup’ within
IP-networks) (an IETF protocol) VC Video Conferenceing VAS Value Added Service (sometimes called supplementary service)
(related to / on top of) a more basic service like basic call or VoIP) VoIP Voice over IP ( ”IP-telephony” )
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Acronyms and terms: a few from health care
Discharge letter (Norsk: ”epikrise”) A written report from hospital til GP
EPR (Norsk: EPJ) Electronic patient record (/journal)
GP General Practitioner (norsk: ”fastlege”)
Pager (Norsk: ”personsøker”) a device still in use in health care in Norway this device is one way only
(and not integrated with phone in/out)
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Terminologies from telco and comp.sci
Conversational service is used by 3GPP (IMS) to describe non-same place real time communication where the timing requirements support fully natural conversation between two humans.
Synchronous communication is communication taking place at the same time (as opposed to traditional mail, voicemail etc).
Real time communication is by some regarded as synonymous to synchronous communication Note [1] . However, it may also be used somewhat differently for communication with strict timing requirements (such as lip synchronization, detailed jitter requirements etc.), and this is the way it is used in telecom.
Note [1] It seems that e.g. Bardram use the term ‘real time’ in this sense without specifying any strict timing requirements.
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Some applications for comm.&coord and a classification system
Same place Different place
Diff. time
Same time
Time
Place
High
Medium Low
Medium
yellow notesPaper based patient journal
snail mailemailEPR
project room
voice callsvideo conf. (planned ornon-planned)
Face to Face (F2F)(planned oropportunistic)
(example: room, corridor, bed ward, same house, ..
Peripheral A
wareness
IM
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Some presence / IM systems with GUI
(1:from Cisco2:from http://missig.org/julian/projects/jabber/
3:MSN: note online (PC) vs Mobilegeneral: note combined use of fixed icons (red, green) and free text
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Presence/awareness in hospital today (for nurses) Note: anonymous presence
Ceiling in corridor
Consoles by the door (old/new)Lamp outside of room (some nurse present)
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Presence / awareness: ihospital.dk (research)
Locationstatus of operationvideo from op.plan for new op.fixed screen chat++dedicated for surgical department
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Status+location+ activityinto a phonebook-application on phones
From AwarePhone www.ihospital.dk(implemented on Nokia GSM phones with Java)
Status: Relying on manual input(ex. Operation)
Location (ex. OP1)Relying on a location tracking infrastructure
Activity (ex. Oper. (9-12):Fetched from a calendar
Send text messageCall
/contact
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”Business relationship” of AwarePhone
Endpoint (phone) supports ’click-to-call’ from addressbook application
Endpoints like big screens and PC via fixed IP network
VAS / applications for location and status + texting (with priority) on top of a local IP network
IP (WiFi/GPRS)
Public GSM network
No relationship (API) hereno location or call control to/fromGSM (TelenorFusion.no: offeringinterfaces for such use (and more)
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Compare to VoIP: two business models
Skype (global, proprietary) and Telio (SIP based) Offers VoIP over a best effort IP network,
Telio for a fixed monthly rate NOT by charging per minute Assumes that enduser has a separate relationship with the ISP
(Internet Service Provider) NO RELATIONSHIP between application (VoIP) provider and the
ISP (network provider). Two relationships for enduser Supports nomadic users (enduser needs to find/establish
relationship with local ISP by himself) IMS: IP Multimedia Subsystem (SIP-based mobile system)
more bundling of network connectivity and the application (VoIP) into one service to the enduser
More similar to GSM, supports roaming via one customer relationship
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Soft issues (humans and organizations)
Media Richness Theory Social translucence (or selective transparency) Affordance (much used for UI/GUI) Mobility work / overhead caused by mobility
or similar overhead to maintain right status Workarounds Our choice: Humans shall have the final control
no totally automatic ’smart’ call divert to voicemail or similar ’smartness’ in the application
relying instead on good use of social translucence / utilizing social rules obeyed by persons
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Media richness theory
Media richness is defined in terms of how well a medium can communicate equivocal or ambiguous information (e.g. video of the face of the speaker, body language.
‘grounding’ etc) Face-to-face and video telephony is ‘rich’, and then
comes voice telephony, other synchronous media and then asynchronous text.
Note: Voice telephony (VoIP) and video telephony (VVoIP) is differentiated regarding media richness.
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Oral or written?
Robert and Dennis (2005) argues that non same time (asynchronous) communication will allow the receiver to carefully consider the arguments and that this makes well suited in many types of arguments and discussions. (even though not rich according to media richness theory (the ‘paradox of richness’).
Inside a hospital doctors use much meetings and oral communication (in addition to written EPR)
Note: discharge letter from hospital to GP is always written text which in general is less suited (that oral/ F2F) to
communicate equivocal or ambiguous information
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Social translucence
Eriksson and Kellogg:http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/Papers/SocialNav.pdf
ICT-solutions supporting accountability ”I know that you know, hence I behave properly”
Example 1: A door with a small window (orally) Example 2: Communication by 30 persons in one room organizing an
event (oral explanation) I know (that sound is fading) I know that you know (that sound is fading) Everyone can be held accountable for what the heard, but not for what was not
able to be hear (due to distance), people place themselves acacordingly
Our idea: make system that utilize social accountability e.g. in an awareness system, allow persons to mark ’busy’ and utilize social accountability to trust
people to make this decision only when appropriate (others can see/judge, hence I behave properly )
I know that you know that I was in busy status, still you called me, hence I trust that this is important etc.
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ICT =/= physical world as we know it
Sitation from Eriksson and Kellogg: ”[D]esigners in [architecture and urbanism] can assume the existence of a
consistent and unquestioned physics that underlies social interaction. There is no such constancy in the digital world”
Example from paper: half-duplex telecomunication, Other examples:
Access rights/ privacy In a house privacy is governed via locks and closed doors + the
physical layout of the house Much more complex to understand access rights in Unix, Facebook,
LMS (like It’s Learning etc.)
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Affordance An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment,
that allows an individual to perform an action. Much used for UI/GUI design see e.g. Norman, in book The Design of Everyday Things)
Norman's affordances "suggest" how an object may be interacted with.
Norman's 1988 definition makes the concept of affordance relational, rather than subjective or intrinsic. This he deemed an "ecological approach,"
The focus on perceived affordances is relevant in practical design problems from a human-factors approach, which may explain its widespread adoption.
Example from St.Olav: Awareness can be obtained by leaving the doors to patient rooms
semi-open. This system affords a gradual level of awareness/privacy via both visual sight and audible sounds
Awareness via pushing of buttons: This affords a binary presence (less grading)
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Affordances of fixed display (as used in hospitals)
Easy to see (’at a glance’) Hands-free operation in most cases Offer awareness to many
(not directed only to one person) Allows good shared understanding (redundant knowledge
and redundant information) In the corridor ceiling:
Outside the rooms
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FMC: Fixed Mobile Convergenceor UC: Unified Communication
FIXED =/= MOBILE ! Just study the affordances of fixed and mobile
communication systems (’phones’ / PCs ++). They are are not the same
Or study the way people use IM on PC vs IM on Mobile Our aim: pick the best from both worlds
Do not treat all devices as the same, as many consultants claim is wise in UC
It might be wise to handle both fixed and mobile devices in the same system, but not as totally ”similar” entities
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FMC / Unified user experience
Picture Telenor, telektronikk:
http://www.telenor.com/en/resources/images/051-062_ConvergedTelecomMarket-ver1_tcm28-36179.pdf
My claim: Email on PC =/= email on mobile etc.
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Concept: ”Mobility work” In GSM we have the formal protocoll of mobility management
This was designed with the system, (in order to locate all mobile phones, update location area etc.)
In real words it is convinient that things and persons are mobile, but this also give rise to overhead Additional (overhead) work to search/find for a thing/person
Ad hoc procedures like writingyellow notes ++ (as a kind of ”mobility management”)
(Mobility work is described e.g. in Bardram and Bossen) ”Availability work”
Additional (overhead) work to keep one’s presence/status up to date
E.g. Absentee marking on wireless phones becomes more important than it was on fixed phones (more interrupts in inappropriate situations)
J. Grudin has much relevant discussion on manual updates of collaborative systems in general: Rule: the one with new work must see some benefit for herself
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Workarounds
Any unintended way (not designed by the designer) that the enduser works around a perceived problem (to solve a problem) If a clock is missing in the system, place a clock next to it If the wireless phone is too interruptive (have no ’absentee
marking), take out the battery (St.Olav) May also be the case that functions exists in the system, but that
this fact is not known by the users Silent-button exists on the phone, but many users take out
battery instead (St.Olav) Presence buttons at St.Olav (when nurses enter/leaves a
patient room) Buttons and lamps not always used, often they leave doors semi-open instead, A simple workaround (the physical doors has richer/better/easier affordances)
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Context matters! BUT....
Organizational context matters, ref. all litterature in CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work)
BUT How much of an applications neds to be tailormade to a
particular domain (like health care), or even to each hospital?
And how much can we rely on a common solution which can be domesticated by the users
How to utelize the “long tail” (very special solutions) and who should do it? (Big telco operators or smaller 3rd parties alone or together with big telcos?)
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Technology and infrastructure
Why (not) standards? The role of (common) infrastructure The role of legacy (The next slides are just a personal perspective)
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Why not standards?
Quicker time to market Standardization efforts take time...
Possibility to ”lock in” customers Ask Microsoft !
NOTE: Microsoft html =/= proper html, MSN SIP =/= proper SIP Ask Apple, Amazon/Kindle and more Ask Skype!
Note: Skype offer Skype-in and Skype-out to PSTN and GSM (but not to other VoIP solutions)
NOTES: One may start off proprietary, and later offer the result as an open
specification (not necessarily open source) PDF is an open and de facto industry standard Skype is not open at all
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Why standards? Interoperability
All-to-all-telephony is ALWAYS assumed in telco Independence of handset vendor, subscription, base station
vendor, etc. Competition Global market Ask GSM community!
Multiple handset vendors (Nokia, Sony-Ericson, Samsung, LG, ++) each having a global market
Multiple vendors of infrastructure components (Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola ++)
Multiple service providers (Telenor, NetCom (/TeliaSonera), Orange, Vodephone,...
(Not all telephony standards are easily undestandable to ’average-joe’ (Java-programmer), this may constrain service competiotion
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SIP: Session Initiation Protocol
A standard from IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Also used by traditional telecom standardization bodies
3GPP (with ETSI for UMTS) for use in IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem in UMTS
Baseline SIP handles call set up SIP Refer handles ’call transfer’ (used by us) SIP allows for extensions (used by us)
SIP for presence SIMPLE
not used here, but relevant for UC Ubiquitous Computing Relevant for IM/presence systems
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Infrastructure
”Everything that may be used by many applications” The network (if properly layered with open interfaces) AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) is generric and
typically used by many applications NOTE
Same location technology may be used by many applications (if properly layered)
Same application (like ”Buddy”) may use many types of location technology (if properly layered)
Infrastructure may suffer from the chicken and egg problem. ”What is the killer app?” This is not really a proper question for infrastructure Ex.: smarthouse: Is energy saving the killer app? Ex.: IMS: Is video (or location or...) the killer app?
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The role of legacy
”Legacy is everything that works” ”Network externalities” has a value
Owning the first fax machine has little value Value of interworking with GSM and PSTN
Even Skype has found that useful (though otherwise proprietary)
Legacy may be a blessing but also a curse May limit the way we think
ex: email vs Facebook wall Interworking with legacy may also constrain the solutions How many of the peculiar solutions in PSTN shall be
carried over to VoIP? Depends on who you asks and their knowledge and business
interest
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Film: PDA in hospitals
A few scenes from the film will be shown
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ENME (network centric)
A centralized solution made in cooperation with Telenor originally made as the master thesis of Egil Østhus in
2005 Later published
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2 Scenarios for ENME
Business trip A mobile worker Bob about
to enter the airport express train
A caller Alice phones Bob with MMoIP
Bob answer with PDA/phone
Health care Use of PDA, pat. terminal,
(IM+loc.) + phones Nurse Ann phones Dr. Bob
with MMoIP Dr. Bob. answers on (IP)-
phone
caller + patient calleecalleecaller
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2 Scenarios for ENME (continued)
Business trip Later in the call Traveller moves to booth
with bigger screen, multimedia is added by the ENME service after a proposal towards Bob on his PDA/phone
Health care Later in the call Dr. Bob moves to booth
with bigger screen, multimedia is added by the ENME service after a proposal towards Dr. Bob on his PDA/phone
same callee (different picture!)
same callee
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Requirements of ENME (high level)
1. The ENME service shall be a value added service on top of an all-to-all telephony service. It shall work with a major standard MMoIP protocol.
2. ENME shall detect when a more suitable context occurs (i.e., fitting the proposed media types better). ENME shall then suggest an upgrade of the media types by moving the session to the new terminal(s).
3. The ENME service shall support mobility.4. ENME shall work in a business case, i.e. it shall be possible
to make a sensible charging of the value added service, as well as of the network resources used to transport the media types.
5. Substantial parts of ENME shall be demonstrated in June 2005 after 5 mo. work.
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Architecture overview
SIP network (e.g. IMS operated by Telenor)
SIP entityContext/ENME
API IMS to VAS-provider (3rd party or Telenor) is needed
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Design /animation
Voice
!
Video
Voice
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PPCom: endpoint centric
Network centric or? ENME handled context on central server(s) and via central SIP
servers for signaling This time we use a fully distributed service discovery. In PPCom we are putting the endpoint center stage
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Network centric vs endpoint centric
SIPcenter.com [14]: “The traditional network model gives service providers
ultimate control, “ “IMS is clearly rooted in this approach” “[IMS] defines only the network core and has little to say
about edge devices” Our approach is different:
We are using B2BUA on the endpoint itself In this way the endpoint itself becomes a kind of FMC
intagrator
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Incoming vs outgoing calls
Note that several previous papers has described outgoing calls combining several devices Research shows that it is more important to cover the
case of an (unplanned) incoming call (see e.g. Belotti and Bly [2])
For outgoing call the user (callee) is most often able to find a proper terminal up front
Different for incoming calls (when not planned) The added value will probably lie in good handling of the
incoming case
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Incoming scenarios
Incoming call from customer with PPCom: A customer calls Tom from outside the company's domain. The customer Allan calls Tom on Tom's single URI
[email protected] from his video-equipped computer. Tom receives the call on his handheld, and chooses to answer the
call with a nearby video-phone. Incoming call from boss with PPCom:
Tom is in a meeting room with some other employees. His boss Jane is placing a call to [email protected]. Since all calls appears on his handheld terminal before possibly transferred, he is in control of all calls wherever he is.
Depending on the social situation and the caller ID the human (Tom) choose either not to accept the call, or to accept the call and to use the wall mounted VC equipment in the room, or his personal lap top or just use his handheld phone.
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Scenario: Leaving the room suddenly
Enhancement; leaving the room Tom might also choose to start by using the VC
equipment, but decide to leave the room at some stage. He will then bring his handheld with him in order to have a
confidential talk. He might then replace the streams on the VC equipment
with voice on the handheld. This shows that handling mobility / social rules may
also be important for the value of the service
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Mobility and terminals in pervasive environments
We do not cover full personal mobility
We also assume that the callee is inside the (possibly distributed) enterprise using other devices (D) also
within the same enterprise domain (near by)
When outside of office environment plain SIP (MMoIP) is used as a basic multimedia call.
(D1). (D2)
Personal device (C)
1-1
(D3)
(D4)
Multi: C+DSeveral possible Di’sOne used at a time with C(or C used alone)
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C (B2BUA) on the endpoint (handheld)
Note: In the corresponding RFC from IETF the entity C is shown as a network server
However, C may as well the the endpoint (PDA/phone) as shown here RTP
User domain
User domain
Alice’sphone
Bob’sdevice
C
Correspondingentity
DiMulti:C+D
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Requirements (1/2)
Req.H Human shall be in control of the decisions Req. 1.1 The value added service PPCom shall work
with SIP as the underlying signalling protocol. Req. 1.2 Only one of the parties (caller or callee) need
to be aware of the existence of PPCom. The non-PPCom subscriber shall not need any special software or device to participate beyond standard based MMoIP equipment.
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Requirements (2/2)
Req. 2 PPCom shall detect suitable contexts (e.g., terminals fitting the proposed media types better that the current terminal at hand). This knowledge shall be used in a way allowing human
decisions. Req. 3 The PPCom shall support mobility:
Multi:C+D-paradigm is used User is inside the (virtual / distributed) enterprise I.e.: No need to support personal mobility in general
Note: No support of business traveller staying at a foreign hotel etc. in first phase (may be added later)
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Illustration (incoming call):Local Domain (enterprise)
streams
SIP
SIP signaling
Foreign domain
Req.1.2: Basic SIP
Media
Much related work ignores req. 1.2 and add their ownSIP extensions on the external interface (even non-SIP extensions)
Req. 1.2 enables a stepwise introduction of the smart environment
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Incoming call flow
Caller (Alice)
1.INVITE
2.INVITE3. OK 4. OK
media
BT SDDEVICE INFO
BT SDDEVICE INFO
User action
Handheld (PDA)C
Local deviceD1(VC)
Local deviceD2 (PC)
5. ACK 6. ACK
Autoanswer
Sip servers
Note: user action (”human in the loop”)(The GUI on handheld is not shown (no real design made yet)
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Architecture: separtion of SIP and SD (service discovery)
Cntrl
JAIN SIP
Blue-cove
Handheld controller (C)
Local Device (D)
InquiryBT
client
Event
BTstackSD-C
Blue-cove
BT server
BTstackSD-S
SIPUA
Session Module
Response
Note: BT was used
in the prototype
Evaluation of SD is for further work
Issues: Battery Scalability
Alternatives to BT/SD including use of manual routines?
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Simple-PPCom
Can we build a sensible version of PPCom without using Bluetooth and service discovery? Issues: User interaction when receiving the call must offer a
sensible set of terminals May be based on pre-configured user choices? How to avoid too much manual overhead ”availability work” Autoanswer may raise some privacy issues (and not only in
health care) For which domains?
General office environments? Dedicated solutions for XXX domain? Note: The last scenario in the film offer a special value in
this particular setting because dressing up in sterile is a cumbersome procedure
Not all use of MMoIP offer the same added value