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ISBN 978-952-62-2788-7 (Paperback)ISBN 978-952-62-2789-4 (PDF)ISSN 0355-3213 (Print)ISSN 1796-2226 (Online)

U N I V E R S I TAT I S O U L U E N S I SACTAC

TECHNICA

U N I V E R S I TAT I S O U L U E N S I SACTAC

TECHNICA

OULU 2020

C 770

Daniel Pakkala

ON DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE OF PERSON-CENTRIC DIGITAL SERVICE PROVISIONING: APPROACH, FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS, PRINCIPLES AND PROTOTYPES

UNIVERSITY OF OULU GRADUATE SCHOOL;UNIVERSITY OF OULU,FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING,VTT TECHNICAL RESEARCH CENTRE OF FINLAND

C 770

ACTA

Daniel Pakkala

C770etukansi.fm Page 1 Wednesday, November 4, 2020 3:57 PM

ACTA UNIVERS ITAT I S OULUENS I SC Te c h n i c a 7 7 0

DANIEL PAKKALA

ON DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE OF PERSON-CENTRIC DIGITAL SERVICE PROVISIONING: APPROACH, FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS, PRINCIPLES AND PROTOTYPES

Academic dissertation to be presented, with the assent of the Doctoral Training Committee of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering of the University of Oulu, for public defence in the Oulun Puhelin auditorium (L5), Linnanmaa, on 18 December 2020, at 12 noon

UNIVERSITY OF OULU, OULU 2020

Copyright © 2020Acta Univ. Oul. C 770, 2020

Supervised byProfessor Tero PäivärintaProfessor Mika MäntyläAssociate Professor Mika Ylianttila

Reviewed byProfessor Tuure TuunanenProfessor Tomi Dahlberg

ISBN 978-952-62-2788-7 (Paperback)ISBN 978-952-62-2789-4 (PDF)

ISSN 0355-3213 (Printed)ISSN 1796-2226 (Online)

Cover DesignRaimo Ahonen

PUNAMUSTATAMPERE 2020

OpponentProfessor Matti Rossi

Pakkala, Daniel, On design and architecture of person-centric digital serviceprovisioning: approach, fundamental concepts, principles and prototypes. University of Oulu Graduate School; University of Oulu, Faculty of Information Technologyand Electrical Engineering; VTT Technical Research Centre of FinlandActa Univ. Oul. C 770, 2020University of Oulu, P.O. Box 8000, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland

AbstractDigitalisation and servitisation are changing society in parallel, creating interest into digitalservice as a socio-techno-economical concept in the intersection of the two ongoing changes. Thiswork studies digital service as a target of design via development and operation of autonomousInformation Communication Computing Automation (ICCAT) Technology -based, software-intensive digital service offerings. The work focuses specifically on person-centric digital serviceprovisioning, where a digital service is targeted towards individual persons as service users in acontext-aware, personalised and adaptive fashion. The work studies how the design andarchitecture of person-centric digital service provisioning can be supported in the complex,multifaceted and continuously evolving technologically heterogeneous context.

The work applies Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) in synthesising eightincluded research papers, published during 2003-2019. The results include a novel approach, withfundamental concepts and principles, for the design and architecture of person-centric digitalservice provisioning. Further, the results include a set of laboratory prototypes and instantiationson person-centric digital service provisioning, which suggest feasibility and generalisability of theapproach and principles. The approach is targeted at supporting designers in requirementsspecification, design, architecting and managing the evolution of person-centric digital serviceofferings, independently of the rapidly changing and heterogeneous implementation technologiesof ICCAT.

As novelty and contribution, the proposed approach addresses the elements of person centricityin digital service, unifies phenomenological and artefact views of person-centric digital service,establishes an implementation-technology-independent design level for person-centric digitalservice offerings, and supports the re-use and systematic evolution of the implementation-technology-independent designs across multiple cases of person-centric digital service offerings.

The theoretical implications of person-centric digital service as an emergent multiple-stakeholder information system, with governance boundaries influencing the design of the system,are discussed. As a practical implication, the relation of digital service engineering with softwareand technical systems engineering is discussed.

Keywords: architecture principles, design approach, design principles, digital service,digital service offering, digital service provisioning, software architecture, software-intensive systems

Pakkala, Daniel, Henkilökeskeisen digitaalisen palveluntarjonnan suunnittelu ja arkkitehtuuri: lähestymistapa, peruskäsitteet, periaatteet ja prototyypit. Oulun yliopiston tutkijakoulu; Oulun yliopisto; Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTTActa Univ. Oul. C 770, 2020Oulun yliopisto, PL 8000, 90014 Oulun yliopisto

TiivistelmäDigitalisaatio ja palvelullistuminen muuttavat yhteiskuntaa rinnakkain luoden kiinnostusta digi-taaliseen palveluun sosio-tekno-ekonomisena käsitteenä näiden muutosten leikkauspisteessä. Työ tutkii digitaalista palvelua suunnittelun kohteena, jossa autonomisilla ohjelmistointensiivi-sillä järjestelmillä muodostetaan digitaalisia palvelutarjoamia. Työ keskittyy erityisesti henkilö-keskeiseen digitaaliseen palveluntarjontaan, jossa digitaalinen palvelu suunnataan henkilölle tämän konteksti huomioiden, personoidusti ja mukautuvasti. Työ tutkii, kuinka henkilökeskei-sen digitaalisen palveluntarjonnan suunnittelua ja arkkitehtuuria voidaan tukea monimutkaises-sa, monitahoisessa ja jatkuvasti kehittyvässä teknologisesti heterogeenisessä kontekstissa.

Työ soveltaa suunnittelutieteen tutkimusmenetelmää (DSRM) kahdeksan sisällytetyn tutki-musjulkaisun synteesissä, jotka on julkaistu vuosina 2003-2019. Tulokset sisältävät uuden lähes-tymistavan peruskäsitteineen ja periaatteineen henkilökeskeisen digitaalisen palveluntarjonnan suunnitteluun ja arkkitehtuuriin. Lisäksi tulokset sisältävät joukon prototyyppejä ja instantiaati-oita laboratorio-olosuhteissa, mikä viittaa lähestymistavan ja periaatteiden soveltuvuuteen ja yleistettävyyteen. Lähestymistapa on suunnattu henkilökeskeisten digitaalisten palvelutarjoami-en suunnittelijoille tukemaan vaatimusmäärittelyä, suunnittelua ja evoluution hallintaa nopeasti muuttuvista ja heterogeenisistä informaatio-, viestintä-, tietotekniikka- ja automaatiojärjestelmi-en (ICCAT) toteutusteknologioista riippumattomasti.

Uutuusarvona ja kontribuutiona lähestymistapa huomioi henkilökeskeisyyden digitaalisessa palvelussa, yhdistää ilmiö- ja artefaktinäkökulmat henkilökeskeisessä digitaalisessa palvelussa, luo toteutusteknologiariippumattoman tason henkilökeskeisten digitaalisten palvelutarjoamien suunnitteluun, sekä tukee toteutusteknologiariippumattoman suunnittelun uudelleenkäyttöä usei-den henkilökeskeisen digitaalisen palveluntarjonnan suunnittelutapausten välillä.

Työssä pohditaan henkilökeskeisen digitaalisen palvelun teoreettista merkitystä usean osa-puolen välisenä käyttöhetkellä muodostuvana informaatiojärjestelmänä, joka sisältää suunnitte-luun vaikuttavia osapuolten välisiä hallintorajoja. Lisäksi käytännön merkityksen osalta pohdi-taan digitaalisen palvelun suunnittelua suhteessa ohjelmistojen ja teknisten järjestelmien suun-nitteluun.

Asiasanat: arkkitehtuuriperiaatteet, digitaalinen palvelu, digitaalinen palveluntarjonta, digitaalinen palvelutarjoama, ohjelmistoarkkitehtuuri, ohjelmistointensiiviset järjestelmät, suunnittelun lähestymistapa, suunnitteluperiaatteet

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Preface My journey towards this dissertation has been a long one, spanning over 16 years of research on software-intensive systems and digital service at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and in parallel studying and writing my dissertation as post graduate student at the University of Oulu. As visible in the included publications, my research journey started with an implementation technology dependent constructive research approach, including systems development with demonstrations in a laboratory setting. During the past 16 years, we have witnessed an unprecedented evolution and change in implementation technologies in software-intensive systems and digital service offerings. This has made it challenging to find a way to report research results in a way that those would not become irrelevant along with the implementation technologies used in research prototypes. In my previous included research, I have focused on studying implementation-technology-independent architecture and principles of software-intensive systems, enabling person-centric digital service provisioning. In this dissertation, I further synthesise the implementation-technology-independent findings from my research journey, by presenting an approach, fundamental concepts and a set of principles as novel design knowledge on person-centric digital service provisioning. The motivation for this work has been to synthesise the implementation-technology-independent design knowledge from my previous research, to make the results better accessible and exploitable for designers, architects and researchers working on the digital service engineering and provisioning using the latest implementation technologies (which nowadays are changing even on daily basis due to the adoption of agile software development, continuous integration and continuous deployment practices).

I would like to thank my co-authors and colleagues, as well as my supervisors at the University of Oulu, for encouragement, good co-operation and support on my journey towards this dissertation. Special thanks go to my main supervisor Professor Tero Päivärinta for excellent co-operation and guidance on finalising my dissertation. Also, thanks to pre-examiners of my dissertation Professors Tuure Tuunanen and Tomi Dahlberg for valuable comments. Also, thanks to Professor Matti Rossi for agreeing to act as opponent in defending my dissertation. Last, but not least, warm thanks to my family and friends for providing me also other interesting content of life besides the research.

27.10.2020 Daniel Pakkala

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Abbreviations AI Artificial Intelligence AP Architecture Principle API Application Programming Interface B2B Business to Business CaaS Container as a Service CDD Capability Driven Development CPS Cyber-Physical System DP Design Principle DSE Digital Service Engineering DSR Design Science Research DSRM Design Science Research Methodology FaaS Function as a Service GDPR General Data Protection Regulation GP Guiding Principle IaaS Infrastructure as a Service ICCAT Information, Communication, Computing and Automation

Technology ICT Information and Communication Technology IoT Internet of Things IS Information Systems IT Information Technology ISDM Information Systems Development Methodology ISDT Information Systems Design Theory MDA Model Driven Architecture PaaS Platform as a Service RPC Remote Procedure Call R&D Research and Development S-D Logic Service-Dominant Logic SaaS Software as a Service SIP Session Initiation Protocol SOA Service Oriented Architecture TSE Technical System Engineering TRL Technology Readiness Level UI User Interface UML Unified Modelling Language

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List of original publications This thesis includes and is based on the following original publications, which are referred throughout the text by their Roman numerals:

I Pakkala, D. & Spohrer, J. (2019). Digital service: Technological agency in service systems. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 1886–1895). doi:10.24251/HICSS.2019.229

II Pakkala, D., Välitalo, P., & Latvakoski, J. (2003). A user centric peer-to-peer service environment for interaction with networked appliances. In 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (pp. 242–247). IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICDCSW.2003.1203561

III Pakkala D. & Latvakoski, J. (2006). Distributed service platform for adaptive mobile services. International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, 2(2), 135–148. doi:10.1108/17427370780000148

IV Pakkala, D., Koivukoski, A., & Latvakoski, J. (2005). MidGate: middleware platform for service gateway based distributed systems. In 11th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS’05) (pp. 682–688). IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICPADS.2005.195

V Pakkala, D., Perälä, J., & Niemelä, E. (2007). A component model for adaptive middleware services and applications. In 33rd EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (EUROMICRO 2007) (pp. 21–30). IEEE. doi:10.1109/EUROMICRO.2007.5

VI Pakkala, D. & Perälä, J. (2010). A distributed service component framework for interoperable and modular service oriented pervasive computing applications. In: W. Binder, & S. Dustdar (Eds.) Emerging Web Services Technology. Whitestein series in software agent technologies and autonomic computing (Vol. III, pp. 89–104). Basel: Birkhäuser. doi:10.1007/978-3-0346-0104-7_6

VII Latvakoski, J., Pakkala, D., & Pääkkönen P. (2004). A communication architecture for spontaneous systems. IEEE Wireless Communications, 11(3), 36–42. doi: 10.1109/MWC.2004.1308947

VIII Pääkkönen P. & Pakkala, D. (2015). Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data systems. Big Data Research, 2(4), 166–186. doi:10.1016/j.bdr.2015.01.001

The contributions of the author in the included publications are described in the following list per included publication.

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I The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author was definition of concept and abstraction of digital service with formulation of the approach for the design and development of digital service, better connecting the fields of service science, artificial intelligence, system thinking, software engineering, systems engineering and information systems. Jim Spohrer had the role of advisor, especially regarding service science, service systems and artificial intelligence, and contributed especially in section 2 of the paper.

II The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author was the design and development of the concept of user-centric, peer-to-peer service environment and related gateway-based distributed service and system architecture. The contribution of Pekka Välitalo was the design and implementation of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)-based connection establishment. Juhani Latvakoski had the role of advisor and contributed to the introduction, structure and commenting of the publication.

III The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author covers all sections of the publication. Juhani Latvakoski had the role of advisor and contributed to the introduction, structure and commenting of the publication. The additional persons who participated in the implementation of laboratory prototype systems are mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the publication.

IV The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author covers all sections of the publication. Aki Koivukoski provided contributions to section 3.3 of the publication on the description of the P2P Messaging component and participated in the trial systems implementation. Juhani Latvakoski had the role of advisor and contributed to the introduction, structure and commenting of the publication.

V The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author covers all sections of the publication. Juho Perälä contributed to the description of the prototype systems in the validation section of the publication, as well as to the implementation of the prototype. Prof. Eila Ovaska (previously Niemelä) had the role of advisor and contributed to the introduction and commenting of the publication.

VI The author had the role of lead author in the publication. The contribution of the author covers all sections of the publication. Juho Perälä contributed to the implementation and description of the laboratory prototype system described in section 5 of the publication.

VII The author had the role of co-author in the publication. The contribution of the author was limited to the description, design and implementation of the service gateway-based system architecture and ‘plug and play’ installation of software components in the service gateway presented in the research experiments description.

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VIII The author had the role of co-author in the publication. The contribution of the author was limited to the co-design of the reference architecture and implementation-technology-independent analysis framework for data-related functionalities in technical systems realising big-data-based digital service offerings (Figure 1 - functionality categories providing a framework for the reference architecture formulation).

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Contents Abstract Tiivistelmä Preface 7 Abbreviations 9 List of original publications 11 Contents 15 1  Introduction 19 

1.1  Background and motivation .................................................................... 23 1.2  Research goal and results ........................................................................ 24 1.3  Research method and scope .................................................................... 27 

2  Related work 31 2.1  Introduction of central concepts and focus of the work .......................... 31 2.2  Conceptual foundation ............................................................................ 37 

2.2.1  Service and service provisioning .................................................. 37 2.2.2  Digital service ............................................................................... 39 2.2.3  Person-centric digital service ....................................................... 42 2.2.4  Design and architecture of person-centric digital service

provisioning .................................................................................. 47 2.3  Approaches on person-centric digital service provisioning .................... 50 

2.3.1  Service science and IS viewpoints ................................................ 51 2.3.2  Computer science and software viewpoints ................................. 56 2.3.3  Summary and comparison of related approaches ......................... 62 

2.4  Summary of research gaps ...................................................................... 69 3  Research process 73 

3.1  Designed artefacts ................................................................................... 73 3.2  Research process ..................................................................................... 74 

3.2.1  DSR cycle 1: Proof-of-concept system design on person-centric digital service provisioning .............................................. 77 

3.2.2  DSR cycle 2: Proof-of-concept system design on person-centric digital service provisioning with a middleware platform ........................................................................................ 78 

3.2.3  DSR cycle 3: Proof-of-concept system design for behavioural adaptation of software components with a middleware platform .................................................................... 80 

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3.2.4  DSR cycle 4: Proof-of-concept system design for interoperability of software service offerings with a middleware platform .................................................................... 81 

3.2.5  DSR cycle 5: Design of implementation-technology-independent analysis framework for data-related functionalities in digital service .................................................... 82 

3.2.6  DSR cycle 6: Design of architectural approach for person-centric digital service engineering and operation ......................... 83 

4  Results synthesis 85 4.1  Result 1: Design and architecture approach for person-centric

digital service provisioning ..................................................................... 88 4.1.1  Rationale ....................................................................................... 88 4.1.2  Synthesis of the approach ............................................................. 91 4.1.3  Goals of the approach ................................................................... 96 4.1.4  Fundamental concepts of the approach ......................................... 97 4.1.5  Guiding principles and beliefs of the approach .......................... 103 4.1.6  Principles of development process of the approach .................... 106 

4.2  Result 2: Design principles and architecture principles facilitating the design of person-centric digital service provisioning .......................................................................................... 110 4.2.1  Design principles ........................................................................ 112 4.2.2  Architecture principles ............................................................... 119 

4.3  Result 3: Prototype artefacts on person-centric digital service provisioning .......................................................................................... 128 4.3.1  1st DSR cycle: Experimenting with person-centric digital

service ......................................................................................... 128 4.3.2  2nd DSR cycle: Middleware platform ......................................... 130 4.3.3  3rd DSR cycle: Middleware platform support for

behavioural adaptation of software components ........................ 132 4.3.4  4th DSR cycle: Middleware platform support for

interoperability of software service offerings ............................. 134 4.3.5  5th DSR cycle: Analysis framework for data-related

functionalities ............................................................................. 136 4.3.6  6th DSR cycle: Architectural approach ....................................... 137 4.3.7  Synthesis on need for a new design and architecture

approach ..................................................................................... 139

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5  Discussion 141 5.1  Contributions in light of state-of-the-art and related work .................... 141 

5.1.1  Contribution 1: A novel design and architecture approach ......... 142 5.1.2  Contribution 1.1: Fundamental conceptual basis ........................ 145 5.1.3  Contribution 1.2: Design and architecture principles ................. 147 5.1.4  Contribution 2: Prototypes and instantiations............................. 148 

5.2  Theoretical implications ........................................................................ 150 5.3  Practical implications ............................................................................ 155 5.4  Limitations of validity ........................................................................... 158 5.5  Recommendations for further research ................................................. 159 

6  Summary 161 References 165 Original publications 173 

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1 Introduction Digitalisation [1] and Servitisation [2] are moving forward in parallel in many different sectors of society. Digitalisation refers to the ongoing socio-technical change via adoption and use of digital Information, Communication, Computing and Automation Technology (ICCAT) -based, software-intensive product and service offerings by people and organisations in daily living and business. Servitisation refers to the socio-economical change, where people and organisations are increasingly interested in and tend to buy, use and provide service offerings instead of, or in addition to, product offerings. At the intersection of these societal-level change drivers, new digital service offerings are developed and introduced also in more traditional sectors outside ICT, such as: Finance, Health [3], Transportation [4] and Energy [5]. Digital service has received relatively little research attention, considering its societal-level relevancy for better understanding and influencing the ongoing socio-techno-economic change. This change is also the context for introducing new ICCAT technology-based digital service innovations and offerings, questioning the feasibility of the current technical systems and implementation-technology-driven design and development approaches. The activity of designing and developing digital service offerings is increasingly present in many kinds and sizes of organisations. It is a collaborative and cross-disciplinary activity participated in by business, technical, legal and marketing experts from one or more organisations. It is often initiated as a design and development project, which may lead to more continuous operative work for systematic maintenance and evolution of the resulting digital service offerings.

To provide a concrete example of the change towards digital service, e.g. banking services have already evolved from managing physical currency in physical bank offices, to managing mainly digital currency, largely via online and mobile digital service towards the customers. People no longer need to go to a bank office to take care of the majority of their banking transactions, but can perform those on-demand in real time via digital service offerings of the banks. From the viewpoint of the bank as a service provider, the digitalisation of banking services has impacted the type of employees needed. Instead of bank clerks and financial experts, online banking services require design, development and operation of online banking services (digital service offerings), requiring employees and experts with ICT and software competences for design, development and operation of the digital service offerings. Without these competences and the related digital service

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offering, banks as organisations are not able to provide digital services for their customers.

Many of daily-life human activities and interactions are potential targets for personalised digital service offerings. In these, value is co-created between an individual person as a user and a service provider, mediated by use of a technical system, automating the service provider’s role in the interaction. Accordingly, the technical system used in digital service provisioning represents technological agency of the service provider, as described in the included publication I.

Our society is in transition towards digitalisation [6] of nearly everything, including digitalisation of service and service provisioning. Service provisioning is the overall process and set of responsibilities enabling a service provider to provide benefits for a service user, fulfilling the value expectation of the service user.

In addition to society-wide digitalisation discussed in [1] and [6], people and things are also becoming continuously interconnected and able to interact in real time independently of their physical location [7], [8]. Furthermore, capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are reaching human-level performance in a growing number of tasks, automating and augmenting work done by humans [9], [10]. From the socio-economical viewpoint, legal entities (persons and organisations) have new opportunities and channels for interaction, and governments have started their efforts to regulate the rights and responsibilities of people and organisations in the evolving digital realm [11].

This multifaceted parallel development is making new kinds of information sources, interactions and digital service possible and available within society. In parallel with the socio-technical development contributing to the evolution of the technical infrastructure for digital service innovation and provisioning, there are also socio-economic drivers for digital service innovation. These include general orientation towards service and service-based economy from the established product and production-based economy, which is also known as servitisation [2].

The socio-technical evolution enabled by digital technologies and the Internet has already established a global cyberspace [12]. Via adoption of IoT [13] and cyber-physical systems [14], the cyberspace is evolving from digital information-intensive communication and interaction among people, towards supporting also information exchange, interaction and actuation with physical objects and artefacts (e.g. physical environment, machines, buildings and robots). This evolution further adds complexity of digital service innovation, design and development, as the technical systems enabling digital service provisioning can no longer comprehensively be approached or understood as information systems, but also

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require consideration of the communication, computing and automation technology and the corresponding subsystems present as part of the technical system constituting a digital service offering.

Even though technologically advanced digital service offerings become possible, it is the people and organisations who judge the value and usefulness of new digital service offerings. Ultimately, the adoption, use and success of new digital service offerings is dependent on the markets and decisions of individual persons and organisations participating in the markets. These decisions are based on the benefits and mutual value, which digital service offerings create for their users and providers. Accordingly, from the viewpoint of service systems and service science [15], digital service can be seen as a technologically mediated value co-creation interaction between service providers and service customers as legal entities (persons and organisations). All interaction between the legal entities is not considered service interaction, but certain constraints and requirements have been identified for interaction to be considered as service interaction. These constraints and requirements have been described in the ISPAR (Interact-Serve-Propose-Agree-Realize) model of service interaction described in [15].

In this work, digital service provisioning refers to the overall process, responsibilities and activities that a service provider carries out in order to provide a digital service for a service user. These include design, development, deployment and operation of the technical ICCAT system, as a software-intensive autonomous system capable of interaction and value co-creation with a service user. In other words, digital service does not have a ‘human in the loop’ in the direct value co-creation interaction with service users. Instead, human work in digital service is related to the design, development, deployment, maintenance and evolution of the ICCAT system, which performs the service on behalf of the digital service provider.

A technical ICCAT system alone does not constitute a digital service offering. In addition, a service provider giving a value proposition, and making a service agreement with a service user, is needed to take the overall responsibility of the ICCAT system performing the digital service for the service user, on behalf of the service provider. Accordingly, as a concept, digital service refers to value co-creating interaction between a digital service offering (ICCAT system) and a service user.

The design of a digital service takes place in a multidimensional context, which includes the stakeholders, physical and social environment, enabling technologies and cyberspace (available globally connected digital infrastructure). As a software-intensive socio-techno-economical and cyber-physical system, architecture of a

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digital service refers to fundamental concepts or properties of digital service embodied in its elements, relationships and in the principles of its design and evolution in its environment [16], which is the social, technological, economical, cyber and physical environment relevant for design, development, operation and use of the digital service.

Aside from human work related to the design and development of the ICCAT system (technical system engineering), digital service requires additional human work related to the design and development of the digital service offering (digital service engineering). The relation between the two engineering processes is that the digital service engineering activities produce requirements for the technical system engineering, as all the features of the digital service from the provider side are assumed to be realised and carried out autonomously by an autonomous software-intensive ICCAT system in direct interaction with a service user.

The perceived value of any service offering is highly dependent on the needs, preferences and situation of an individual person as a service user, whether he or she is at work (using services at work as service provider’s customer) or at leisure (using services outside work as a consumer). Accordingly, also in digital service offerings the implications of person centricity are important to study in order to maximise the perceived value of digital service on individual user level.

In this work, person centricity refers to design philosophy, where digital service offerings are designed and provisioned to users, viewing users as individual persons with their basic stable needs, as well as dynamically changing needs, interest, preferences and context in their daily life setting. Accordingly, person-centric digital service offerings and their provisioning are personalised, adaptive and context aware. Addressing the basic user needs in design of digital service refers to avoiding contradictory designs with the basic human needs [17], such as the general need for safety, which can be seen as a root source for security and privacy requirements in the design of digital service. The stable basic needs can also provide inspiration for maximising the added value or benefit towards a large user base in the design of digital service offerings.

Person centricity is closely related with user centricity. However, instead of trying to identify and address utility and usability needs of user groups (e.g. via interviews and participatory design), person centricity targets addressing utility and usability against needs of an individual person with individual spatiotemporal, cultural and technical context, with minimal intervention, disturbance and interaction. Accordingly, in person-centric digital service provisioning, the user responsibilities should be minimised, and use of digital service offerings should be

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made as easy and safe as possible to maximise the added value or benefit for an individual person as digital service user.

In this work, person-centric digital service provisioning is defined as a type of digital service provisioning, where the digital service offered to user is personalised, aware of, and adaptive to an individual person as a user with changing needs, preferences, context and technical infrastructure for the use of the digital service offered. Accordingly, a person-centric digital service refers to a digital service utilising near real-time, dynamically changing data and information about the user’s context, interests, preferences and potential needs, in order to personalise and adapt the service behaviour for optimising user-perceived value, benefit and experience of the service.

The increasing heterogeneity and rapid evolution of ICCAT implementation technology, in parallel with expectation on personalised, context-aware and adaptive digital service offerings, creates a problem for digital service providers: The design, development, operation and maintenance costs of person-centric digital service provisioning is likely to increase, as the complexity of the design artefact increases in rapidly changing technologically heterogeneous context. Accordingly, ways of facilitating and supporting person-centric digital service provisioning is a relevant topic for research.

1.1 Background and motivation

In the ongoing complex and multifaceted socio-techno-economic digital transformation of society, it is challenging to identify a foundation, which is stable enough to be used as basis for analysing, modelling, governing and designing change efficiently. Service science and service systems [15] provide one such foundation by studying value co-creation between legal entities with different physical and digital resources. In the context of service science and service systems, technology and technical systems are evaluated by the added value and benefits that those produce in value co-creation interactions between legal entities (a.k.a focal resources) in a service system of interest.

In combination with service systems [15], systems thinking [18] and engineering disciplines related to ICCAT, the service-dominant logic formulates a mindset, which has potential in the design of digital service provisioning. This highly interdisciplinary mindset is present as the motivation and basis for synthesis and description of a novel design and architecture approach for person-centric digital service provisioning proposed in this work.

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The design of a digital service offering is a complex undertaking, requiring comprehensive socio-techno-economic and cyber-physical understanding, and an approach to successfully address all the relevant factors in the design of digital service. Social, technological and economic research have each addressed digital service innovation from their disciplinary perspective, but a comprehensive cross-disciplinary approach to digital service innovation, design and engineering is missing. This ‘hole’ in the existing knowledge and research literature is the motivation for this work to study and increase knowledge on the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning, taking into account the cross-disciplinary and complex nature of digital service, as a highly user preferences-, context- and situation-dependent phenomenon. Part of the motivation is also that the initial contributions made in this work would trigger further research on digital service provisioning as a phenomenon requiring cross-disciplinary understanding and a new design approach due to its central position in the ongoing socio-techno-economic and cyber-physical evolution of our society, businesses and daily life.

1.2 Research goal and results

This research focuses on studying person-centric digital service provisioning, from the viewpoint of the design and architecture approach and principles, for supporting and facilitating the design and architecting of person-centric digital service offerings. Accordingly, the results should be of interest to those professionals involved in the design and development of person-centric digital service offerings, as well as to organisations providing, or planning to provide, person-centric digital service. The research goal of the work can be summarised via a research question focusing on the design and architecture of person-centric (personalised, adaptive and context aware) digital service provisioning. The research question of the work is:

How can the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning be supported in the multifaceted and continuously evolving technologically heterogeneous context of digital service offerings?

This research work synthesises, and presents as results, a cross-disciplinary and implementation-technology-independent design and architecture approach, with design and architecture principles, for the design of person-centric (personalised, adaptive and context aware) digital service offerings, and for provisioning of those

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to end users. The synthesis is done based on analysis and summary of the findings from a research continuum of six complementary Design Science Research (DSR) [19] cycles, which have been reported in previously published, peer-reviewed research of the author (included publications I–VIII). A complementary goal is also to demonstrate implementation feasibility of person-centric digital service provisioning, providing initial proof-of-concept for the overall design and architecture approach and principles. In summary, the results forming also the contributions of the work are:

1. A novel approach for the design and architecture of person-centric (personalised, adaptive and context-aware) digital service provisioning 1.1. Identification and definition of the fundamental concepts related to

digital service and digital service provisioning. 1.2. Principles for the designing and architecting of person-centric digital

service offerings 2. Initial proof-of-concept of the design and architecture approach and principles

via a set of prototypes and instantiations on person-centric digital service provisioning.

The results include a novel approach and principles for the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning. An existing definition of what constitutes an approach [20] is applied. Accordingly, the following aspects are described for the resulting approach for the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning based on the synthesis of the included publications: 1) goals, 2) guiding principles and beliefs, 3) fundamental concepts, and 4) principles

When comparing design principles with architecture principles, as vehicles to transfer design knowledge, one can see that the two have obvious synergies and complement each other. The definitions and proposed formulation of what constitutes a design principle [21] and architecture principle [22] from the existing literature are applied in the work, in describing 6 design principles and 7 architecture principles as design knowledge results relevant for the activity of designing and architecting of person-centric digital service offerings. In the work, the design and architecture principles are formulated based on synthesis of the included publications.

The formulation of design and architecture principles in this work follows the proposed formulation for effective design principles presented in [21]. However, as the proposed formulation for design principles in [21] is missing the utility aspect

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of the design principles, the original formulation is augmented by adopting, in addition, the formulation proposed for architecture principles [22], which augment design principles by providing additional rules or guidelines for design and representation during the design activities. Accordingly, the formulation of design and architecture principles to be presented will follow a similar structure, where in addition to the statement, also motivation, implication and measures information for each principle is described.

As a summary regarding the research goal and results, Fig. 1 illustrates the overall research strategy, results and contributions of the work, including the included preceding research by the author, results from the synthesis of the included research, and contributions of the work beyond the related work found as research literature.

Fig. 1. Research strategy, results and contributions of the work.

The validity of the results of the synthesis are limited to the formative evaluation of novelty in the light of existing knowledge on the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning found in the literature. Limitations to the validity of the results will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.4 of the work.

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1.3 Research method and scope

The work studies an artificial, socio-techno-economic and highly information-technology-intensive phenomenon of person-centric digital service provisioning. As the origin of the subject of the research is artificial instead of natural, the research represents design science [19], philosophically positioned within the sciences of the artificial origin [23]. Whereas natural science targets explaining how and why things are and produces descriptive knowledge, design science targets creating things that are useful for human purposes to attain goals and to produce prescriptive design knowledge [19]. The products of design science may be constructs, models, methods and implementations/instantiations [19]. Regarding DSR outputs [19], the constructs constitute a conceptualisation used to describe problems within a domain and to specify solutions to those - those define the terms for describing and thinking about design tasks. The models are set of propositions or statements expressing relationships among constructs applicable in design tasks. The methods are specified sets of steps used to perform design tasks, which are based on a set of underlying constructs and models of the solution space of the design activities, with intrinsic representations of tasks and results of the design activities. Finally, the implementations/instantiations demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the models and methods they contain.

Within the Information Systems (IS) discipline, the design science is recognised as a research paradigm seeking to extend the boundaries of human and organisational capabilities via creation of new and innovative artefacts [24]. The design science research process consists of the basic activities of building and evaluating artefacts, in parallel with discovery/theorisation and justification on the artefacts [19]. Design science research can also produce new design theory as contribution, which has utility value in the activity of the design of artefacts in the industrial context for the designers involved [25].

The scope of this research is to produce new knowledge in the area of design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning. The research is carried out by analysing and synthesizing the included works (I–VIII) of the author, carried out and published during 2003–2019. The included works represent design science and have applied the constructive [26] and systems development [27] research approach. As the knowledge discovery target of the work is to produce new implementation-technology-independent design knowledge via synthesis of previous implementation-technology-dependent included research, the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) [28] was selected as the most suitable

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research model to be applied in the synthesis. DSRM provides a framework for synthesising implementation-technology- independent design knowledge from design science research, which has been reported, depending on implementation technologies used for building the artefacts for demonstration and evaluation. Implementation-technology-dependent reporting of results is typical for design science research done with constructive [26] and systems development [27] approaches. As implementation technologies evolve quickly, this kind of reporting of research results may lead to the loss of potentially generalisable design knowledge, as the implementation technologies used in reporting become rapidly irrelevant and outdated.

The purpose of a research synthesis is to produce new knowledge by making explicit connections between individual studies on a similar topic that were not visible before [29]. In the work, a research synthesis is provided on six complementary DSR studies by the author, which all share a common problem and motivation statement: Complexity of person-centric digital services provisioning in technologically heterogeneous distributed computing environments. The problem and motivation statement shared by the included DSR studies is directly connected with the research question of the work presented in Section 1.2.

The synthesis in the work applies DSRM, which has been formulated and presented in [28]. Fig. 2 , redrawn from [28], illustrates the DSRM process phases with the type of knowledge discovery targets for each phase within a DSR cycle. In terms of evaluations within the DSR process, an extended evaluation pattern, with a four-phase evaluation described in [30], is adopted in the research process for evaluating the maturity and limitations of the results. Fig. 3, redrawn from [30], illustrates the four phases of evaluation activities within the DSR process, which correspond and partially further detail the knowledge discovery targets of the DSRM process described in [28].

In the context of the research goal and research question, the DSR cycles and related included publications will be synthesised from two main viewpoints:

1) Design knowledge on person-centric digital service provisioning. 2) Designed artefacts on person-centric digital service provisioning.

The included publications and related DSR cycles include prototypes, which are partial and complementary representational instantiations of the design approach and design principles for person-centric digital service provisioning synthesised. The synthesis targets to produce new design theory and design knowledge [25] applicable for the design of person-centric digital service provisioning. As

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concluded in [25], sometimes (and in the case of this work) research on design theory requires a number of instantiations before general principles can be extracted. The results are targeted towards increasing understanding on and supporting the design, architecting, development of person-centric digital service offerings, and provisioning of person-centric digital service. The results will also be discussed as a design theory contribution in the design theory framework proposed in [25]. Evaluation of the designed artefact results is limited to proof-of-concept and feasibility evaluation via prototype instantiations in a laboratory setting, without evaluation in industrial or commercial context. In the evaluation pattern, with the four-phase evaluation described in [30], the evaluation is limited to summative evaluation based on implemented and demonstrated constructs in a laboratory setting (Evaluation 3). The synthesis of the new design knowledge results is based on multiple laboratory-instantiated and -evaluated DSR cycles. However, regarding the new design knowledge results synthesised, the evaluation is limited to formative evaluation, focusing on novelty in relation to existing related research work.

Fig. 2. DSRM process illustration (redrawn from [28]).

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Fig. 3. The four types of evaluations within the DSR process (redrawn from [30]).

The rest of the work is organised as follows: Chapter 2 introduces the central concepts and focus of the work in more detail, reviews the related work in research literature, and summarises the research gaps addressed by the results and contributions of the work. Chapter 3 presents the research process of the work, including an overview of the designed artefacts. Chapter 4 presents the results synthesis based on the included publications and the six related DSR cycles. Chapter 5 presents the discussion on the results in frame of the research gaps addressed, describing contributions of the work. Further discussion is provided on theoretical and practical implications of the results, as well as on limitations of validity and future research recommendations. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a summary of the work.

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2 Related work As already described in the first chapter of the work, the subject of the study, in this design science research work on design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning, lies in the intersection of many different disciplines and fields of research. This chapter will review the related work relevant for discussing the results of the work and identifies the research gaps where the work contributes beyond the existing research knowledge on design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning.

The chapter is divided into four sections. The first section (2.1) provides an introduction to the central concepts and focus of the work. The second section (2.2) will review the research literature relevant for establishing a conceptual foundation for studying the subject. The third section (2.3) will review the research literature relevant for the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning. The last section (2.4) will summarise the research gaps as contribution opportunities for the results of the work.

2.1 Introduction of central concepts and focus of the work

As indicated by the title, the focus is on the study of the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning. To provide an unambiguous basis for the work, and to avoid misunderstandings, this section introduces the central concepts with definitions.

To start unravelling the title, a central concept in the work is service. The term service has many different meanings in many different contexts. No generally agreed meaning exists for it. Different interpretations of the term have been discussed in [31] with an attempt to build mutual understanding within the scientific community. However, even the field of the service science only characterises the concept of service without providing a single definition for the term [15]. As no generally accepted definition exists for the term and concept of service, and digital service is even more ambiguous, definitions are needed to study provisioning of those on an unambiguous basis.

In this work, the term service is used as generally understood and characterised. For example, in [32] service is characterised as: “assistance or benefit afforded another”, “a useful result or product of labour which is not a tangible commodity”, and “a system of labour and material aids used to accomplish some regular work or accommodation for the public: telephone service, train service, postal service.”

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Service is defined, marketed and selected for use by describing the added value or benefit it produces for its user. This is done via value proposition of the service. In this work, value proposition is used as in the included publication I, where it refers to the description of the value (e.g. monetary, benefits and utility) proposed to be realised via offering and use of the related service between the service provider and service user. Accordingly, it should describe the expected value to be achieved via interaction between the service provider and the service user.

Services are provided by one entity to another entity, and as a prerequisite for use of the service, the provider needs to ensure that all the necessary resources, processes, skills and capabilities are in place to fulfil the value proposition communicated to the service user. In this work, the term service provisioning is used to refer to the overall process and set of responsibilities, which a service provider is responsible for in order to provide benefits for a service user in a way that fulfils the value expectation of the service user.

As provisioning and use of services takes place between two or more entities, the entities involved, including the resources, skill and capabilities they govern, form a unified whole meaningful for investigation in the study of service. System is an established concept for studying compositions of related entities and their interaction. In this work, the term system, without delimiting additional definitions, generally refers to any composition of interrelated or interacting entities that forms a unified whole meaningful for examination and discussion. The general definition of a system is still a topic for scientific debate and has been discussed, for example, in [33]. Accordingly, in order to avoid ambiguous use of the term system, this work uses delimiters with the term for referring to different types of systems relevant for the design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning, which include both technical and non-technical systems, with many different types of both. Returning from general systems back to study of service, in this work, the term service system is used as defined in [15], where it is defined as a configuration of people, technology and other resources interacting via value propositions to create mutual value.

In service, the entities involved interact to create mutual value. This interaction is also known as value co-creation. In this work, value co-creation is used as in the included publication I, where it refers to the interaction of two or more service system actors, which creates value for at least two different service system entities governing the actors. The value may be of monetary nature and/or related to benefits and utility of the outcome of the interaction. The concept and theory of value co-creation is still an active subject for research and discussed in more depth

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e.g. in [34]. From the perspective of service systems and service-dominant logic, it is discussed in [35].

Having now introduced the central concepts related to service in general, it is time to introduce the concepts related to the specific type of service studied: digital and person centric. In this work, the term digital service is defined based on the definition of service. Digital service can be defined as a service, which is in full provided by means of applying Information, Communication, Computing and Automation Technologies (ICCAT). Accordingly, and as defined in the included publication I, digital service is: “a service executed in full by a technical system, when a user invokes a digital Information, Computing, Communication and Automation Technology (ICCAT) based system that (co-)creates the desired outcome.”. In other words, the ICCAT system involved in digital service is an operationally autonomous technical system, which has no humans involved in the interaction with the service user from the provider side.

Just like any service, digital service also needs to be provisioned by the service provider for use. In this work, the term digital service provisioning is defined based on the definition of service provisioning. Digital service provisioning is the overall process and set of responsibilities in which a service provider is responsible of in order to provide benefits for a digital service user in a way that fulfils the value expectation of the service user. This includes service providers overall responsibility of the design, development, operation and use of the digital service, and of the technical ICCAT system mediating the service interaction with a user.

Services and value propositions of those, digital or not, can be targeted in many ways. A service may be targeted e.g. at organisations (business-to-business services), citizens (public services) or consumers (business-to-consumer services). There is, however, a commonality across all the different service categories: It is finally people and individual persons in different roles (at work, as organisation representatives and at leisure) who use the service and evaluate the added value or benefit those produce for them in their context.

The work focuses on the study of person-centric digital service provisioning, where the service offerings are targeted at individual persons taking into account their context for service use. In this work, the term person centric refers to a type of service and to a design philosophy, where digital service offerings are designed for and provisioned to users, viewing users as individual persons with their basic stable needs, as well as dynamically changing needs, interests, preferences and context in their daily life setting. Accordingly, person-centric digital service offerings and their provisioning are personalised, adaptive and context aware.

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Having now introduced the concepts related to person-centric digital service provisioning as the subject of the study, it is time to introduce the concepts related to the more detailed focus of the work: The design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning.

In general, design is understood to refer to planning and making of artefacts, including the activity of making, drawing or preparing preliminary plans or sketches of the artefact [32]. Regarding design in the context of this work, the main artefact target of design is person-centric digital service, which refers to the overall activity of specifying, developing and operating technical autonomous ICCAT systems, which in interaction with the service users co-creates value both for the service provider and the service user. It is the human intellectual activity, where the design theory [25] results from this design science research [19] study are targeted to be applicable in practice, have utility value for the designers and architects involved in the design of person-centric digital service offerings.

In this work, the term architecture is used as defined in [16]: “fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution”. In this work, the main architectural interest is on architecture of the autonomous technical ICCAT system, which is designed for and operates in its socio-economic and cyber-physical environment.

As a socio-techno-economic human-induced phenomenon, person-centric digital service provisioning requires cross-disciplinary understanding: The design and architecture of person-centric digital service provisioning requires consideration of the related social, technological and economical aspects in parallel, cross-linking with each other. The requirements for person-centric digital service provisioning, which the design and architecture should meet, can be identified and defined by addressing requirements from the three different aspects in parallel. It is the responsibility of the designer or architect involved in the design of person-centric digital service offerings to address all relevant requirements of the related aspects and stakeholders during the design activity. The requirements from different stakeholders may be conflicting with each other, but it is the task of the designer or architect to design an offering in a way that is an optimal fit or compromise with respect to the identified requirements. As the requirements represent three different aspects (social, technical and economical), the design activity can be considered as cross-disciplinary activity, which needs a cross-disciplinary approach to design. Such an approach is synthesized and presented as a result in the work for the design of person-centric digital service offerings,

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including design and architecture principles supporting designers and architects involved to apply the approach. In this work, the term approach is used as defined in [20]. In [20], an approach in context of information systems development is defined to include the descriptions of 1) goals, 2) guiding principles and beliefs, 3) fundamental concepts, and 4) principles for the information system development process.

The approach presented as a result of the work is cross-disciplinary and treats the different design aspects as subsystems related to person-centric digital service provisioning, and applies systems thinking at the interface of different related aspects (social, technical and economical). In this work, systems thinking is used as defined in [18], referring to an interdisciplinary approach to discuss, explore and analyse relations between many things from different disciplines as systems, without assuming the thing necessarily being physical.

To support the designers and architects in applying the proposed approach, the work also describes design and architecture principles for the design activity of person-centric digital service provisioning. In this work, the term design principle is used as defined in [21]. Within information systems research, formulation and usage of design principles have been acknowledged as an important method for transferring design knowledge that contributes beyond instantiations applicable in a limited context of use [21]. In [21], formulation of design principles in information systems literature is analysed, and an effective formulation of design principles is proposed, where each design principle should be described using three different kinds of information to be considered efficient: 1) actions made possible (afforded) through the use of an artefact, 2) material properties (form and function) of the artefact, and 3) boundary conditions allowing the design to work. As the authors state in [21], a design principle should provide prescriptive knowledge about action and the related artefact’s material properties in terms of both form and function under specified boundary conditions. In this work, the term architecture principle is used as defined in [22]. In [22], architecture principles are defined as follows: “Architectural principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise”. The recommended syntax for architectural principles in [22] defines that for each architecture principle, the following information should be expressed: Statement (What to improve), Motivation (Why this is important for the Enterprise), Implication (What must be done and when, and who is responsible), and Measures (How the fulfilment of the principle is measured. In short- and long-term evolution of the architecture).

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All of the terms above are central concepts regarding the focus on the design and architecture of person centric digital service provisioning, and will be described in more detail in Section 4.1.4 on those parts, where this work will provide further definitions of fundamental concepts for person-centric digital service provisioning. The definitions and terminology used are in line with the included publication I. The other included publications contain the use of mixed terminology not fully aligned with the terminology used in this work. The synthesis of the results in Chapter 4 will provide the bridge between the terminology used and the terms used in the included publications. The positioning of the work, with respect to the central service and system concepts introduced, is illustrated in Fig. 4 below.

Fig. 4. Positioning of the work regarding design and engineering of different types of systems and services.

The focus is on the study of design and architecture of a specific type of digital service provisioning, referred to in this work as person-centric digital service provisioning. In this work, person centricity refers both to the type of digital service, and to the overall procedure and technical system, via which the digital service is provisioned to users. Person-centric digital service refers to a digital service utilising near real-time, dynamically changing data and information about a user’s context, interests, preferences and potential needs, in order to personalise and adapt

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the digital service offering and behaviour to individual user situations, optimising user perceived value, benefit and experience of the service. Accordingly, the value proposition of a person-centric digital service offering is targeted at an individual person in his/her unique and situated context (instead of e.g. targeting organisations with the value proposition, as in Business to Business (B2B) type of service offerings). Person-centric digital service provisioning refers also to organising the overall procedure and technical infrastructure of digital service provisioning in a way that optimises user interaction and responsibilities in use of the digital service, while respecting the safety and privacy needs of the user. This includes recognising and respecting ownership and governance boundaries related to personal data and user-owned technical systems used in the digital service provisioning. As visible from the characterisation of person centricity in context of digital service provisioning, it has implications on multiple levels of digital service provisioning.

2.2 Conceptual foundation

In the existing research literature, digital service has been studied from many different viewpoints by different technical and non-technical disciplines. Accordingly, the concepts and terminology around digital service is mixed, scattered across disciplines, and to some degree also ambiguous. To provide a conceptual basis for the study of design and architecture of person-centric digital service, this section will review the related works from different disciplines.

The section starts by reviewing existing work regarding concepts of service and service provisioning (2.2.1), and then moves on to reviewing related work on concepts related to the specific type of service studied: digital and person centric (2.2.2 & 2.2.3). Finally, related work on concepts related to the design and architecture of person-centric digital service is reviewed (2.2.4).

2.2.1 Service and service provisioning

As a basis for understanding the fundamental concepts related to digital service provisioning, one needs to take a look at how service (digital or not) is approached in research and in different disciplines of research. The concept of service is present in many research disciplines with different approaches and viewpoints to the concept. The term service is used with varying levels of ambiguousness and with different semantics in different disciplines. The term service has many different meanings in many different contexts. Different interpretations of the term have

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been discussed in [31], with an attempt to build mutual understanding within the scientific community. However, even the field of service science only characterises the concept of service without providing a single definition for the term [15]. In common parlance, e.g. in [32], service is characterised as: “assistance or benefit afforded another”, “a useful result or product of labour which is not a tangible commodity”, and “a system of labour and material aids used to accomplish some regular work or accommodation for the public: telephone service, train service, postal service.”

As a concept, service is comparable with the concept of product: Service refers to production of intangible added value or benefit for service users, instead of production of tangible products for purchase by customers. In [36], service-dominant logic is presented as a mindset for understanding the social and economic nature of service as a concept and phenomenon. In the article, ten fundamental premises for service-dominant logic are formulated as an update to the original description in [37]. The articles and service-dominant logic approach the concept of service from phenomenological viewpoint in a cross-disciplinary way. The fundamental premises of service-dominant logic in [36] formulate a mindset, where service is seen as the fundamental basis of exchange in society and economy, and is a phenomenon of value co-creation interaction of social and economic actors (legal entities).

In service, the entities involved interact to create mutual value. This interaction is also known as value co-creation. The value may be of monetary nature and/or related to benefits and utility of the outcome of the interaction. The concept and theory of value co-creation is still an active subject for research and discussed in more depth e.g. in [34]. From the perspective of service systems and service-dominant logic, it is discussed in [35].

In [36], value co-creation is also characterised taking place within and between systems at various levels of aggregation. In [38], a proposal is made to widen/lift up the level of analysis in service research from the dyadic provider-consumer pairs towards analysis of service-related systems, networks and ecosystems. In [39], a multidisciplinary consensus is described in identifying fundamental theoretical concepts and emerging digital frontiers for service innovation, and five service research priorities are identified and formulated as challenges for research.

A service is defined, marketed and selected for use by describing the added value or benefit it produces for its user, which takes place via the value proposition of the service to initiate the service interaction between service provider and user [15]. Services are provided by one entity to another entity, and as a prerequisite for

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use of the service, the provider needs to take care that all the necessary resources, processes, skills and capabilities are in place to fulfil the value proposition communicated to the service user. Service provisioning refers to the overall process and set of responsibilities, which a service provider is responsible for, in order to provide benefits for a service user in a way that fulfils the value expectation of the service user.

As provisioning and use of services take place between two or more different entities, the entities involved, including the resources, skills and capabilities they govern, form a unified whole, which is meaningful for investigation in study of service. A system is an established concept for studying compositions of related entities and their interaction. The general definition of a system is still a topic for scientific debate and has been discussed for example in [33]. In [15], service system is defined as a configuration of people, technology and other resources interacting via value propositions to create mutual value. In [40], work systems theory and applying it in the context of Service Science and Service Systems is discussed. In [40], work system is defined as “a system in which human participants and/or machines perform work (processes and activities) using information, technology, and other resources to produce specific product/services for specific internal and/or external customers.”.

Regarding design philosophies related to the concept of service, service orientation as a design philosophy is independent of any specific implementation technology [41], and a system producing a service may include a varying mix of actors (human and/or machine), resources (natural and/or artificial) and technologies governed by legal entities engaging in service interaction as service provider and service user.

Having now reviewed the related work on the central concepts related to service and service provisioning in general, it is time to review the related work on concepts related to the specific type of service studied: digital and person-centric service.

2.2.2 Digital service

Research streams within IS and computing research have focused on the study of service-oriented architectures especially in context of enterprise architecture and enterprise information systems [42]. Whereas service-oriented architectures have have also been studied outside the enterprise context, e.g. in [43] and [44], it is important to notice the conceptual difference regarding the concept of service

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within the IS and computing research streams, when compared to service science and service innovation research [39], [45].

The research in IS and computing tends to approach the concept of service from the technical system viewpoint, focusing on internal organisation of the technical system for facilitating interoperability, management and evolution of the technical system. In IS and computing research, the term and concept of service has been used as a technology-independent or standard-technology-based description of technical system functionalities with related design principles [46]. The value co-creation aspect, central to concept of service, has received very marginal attention within the IS and computing research. The comprehension on concept of service within computing research is described in [43], where the authors write: “Services are simply means for building distributed applications…”. Accordingly, even though a service-oriented architecture and service-oriented computing would be applied in the technical system design and development, the functionality or utility provided by the end-to-end system and application towards the end users might not be considered as service, in a way understood within the discipline of service science [47].

Within IS and computing research, the term service is often used in plural form, indicating that the researchers understand those mainly as technical artefacts to be designed and developed, instead of value co-creation occurrences between service system actors, as understood and used within the research in service science and service innovation.

The research in service science and service innovation approaches the concept of service from the mutual value co-creation perspective of service system entities and actors via interactions based on value propositions [39], [45]. In this viewpoint, technical systems may, or may not, have an enabling role for the value proposition and interaction for realising it. Accordingly, in this viewpoint, technical system is not considered as a central utility and design target. Instead, enabling the mutual value co-creation interactions within a service system instead has a central role, and is the utility and design target for design and development activities within service science and service innovation. In [39], service systems have been identified as the fundamental theoretical context for service innovation and mutual value creation, and value co-creation as the fundamental theoretical context for the innovation process. Within service science [47], the term service is mostly used to refer to value co-creation interaction, which realises a value proposition between service system entities. If plural is used, this should refer to multiple different occurrences of value co-creation instantiations. Accordingly, within service science, the term

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service has a phenomenological and performative meaning referring to actions and interactions; whereas, within IS and computing research, it mostly has a meaning referring to an artefact designed, developed and offered for use.

The terminology used and contributed in this work attempts to ‘build a bridge’ between these two different conceptions of service. When the term service is used, it is used as understood within the discipline of service science and service systems. When referring to service as understood within the disciplines of IS and computing research, additional definitions are used with the term (e.g. software service or middleware service), referring to technologically enabled service provided for designers and developers as end-users for these service offerings during the design, development and operation of technical systems. It is important to clarify that applying a service-oriented architecture in technical system engineering does not automatically mean that the end product or use of the end product of the engineering should be considered as service. Accordingly, a service and digital service can be designed and developed without applying service-oriented architecture and related design principles. However, applying service-oriented architecture and the related design principles in the design and development of technical systems for digital service provisioning may provide efficiency benefits for the design and development via reuse and management of available software service offerings, as already validated in the enterprise context with various business service offerings [46].

In [48], differences between service and digital service are analysed, and a definition for a digital service is formulated for the purpose of scoping their work on creating a taxonomy for categorisation and analysis of digital service offerings. The definition of digital service in [48] is formulated as follows: “digital services are services which are obtained and/or arranged through a digital transaction over IP (Internet protocol)”.

The concept and definition of digital service, presented in [48], differs from the one presented in this work (see Section 2.1). For example, in this work, digital service is defined as fully automated service provisioning with ICCAT-based automated technical system regarding the actual value co-creating interaction with the service user. Whereas in [48], digitally or technologically mediated transactions between people can also be considered as digital service. Rather, that type of interaction could be characterised as digitally mediated or assisted service in the context of the terminology and concepts of this work. Further, in the definition of [48], digital service is limited to offerings delivered over the Internet Protocol (IP), which is an unnecessary specific network protocol restriction not existing in this

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work. Also, digital service interaction taking place via other protocols can constitute a digital service.

As a summary on the short literature overview above, on the different conceptions of digital service across the different disciplines studying it, it is fair to conclude that the concept of digital service is currently ambiguous and has different semantic meanings. Accordingly, there is a need to define the concept of digital service on an unambiguous basis to provide a foundation for further study of it, which is done in this work (see Section 4.1.4).

2.2.3 Person-centric digital service

Services and value propositions of those, digital or not, can be targeted in many ways. A service may be targeted e.g. for organisations (business-to-business services), citizens (public services) or consumers (business-to-consumer services). There is, however, a commonality across all the different service categories: It is finally people and individual persons in different roles (at work, as organisation representatives and at leisure) who use the service, and evaluate the added value or benefit those produce for them in their context.

This work focuses on the study of person-centric digital service provisioning, where the service offerings are targeted at individual persons, taking into account their context for service use. In this work, the term person centric refers to a type of service and to a design philosophy, where digital service offerings are designed and provisioned to users, viewing users as individual persons with their basic stable needs, as well as dynamically changing needs, interests, preferences and context in their daily life setting. Accordingly, person-centric digital service offerings and their provisioning are personalised, adaptive and context aware.

User centricity or person centricity, in the context of digital service provisioning, is a topic that has received relatively little attention in the literature. The topic has mainly been studied in the area of telecommunication systems and mobile service offerings. User centricity is a design philosophy focusing on the needs of a system user [49]. As a design philosophy, user centricity has effects throughout the system architecture. For example, in [50], the I-Centric communication model has been introduced where user is put in the centre of service provisioning and the system architecture is organised to serve the individual users in personalised, adaptive and ambient-aware fashion. To achieve personalised, adaptive and ambient-aware functionality and features, user-centric digital service offerings utilise context information and are context aware [51].

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In [52], user centricity of federated identity management is studied and the possibility for a universal user-centric federated identity management system is identified. Such a system would be an important enabler for enabling individual users to manage their digital identity and context information accessibility towards multiple different digital service providers. In [53], user-centric service concepts for future Internet applications are presented, and user centricity is discussed via three identified challenges, which future applications impose on the ICT infrastructure of digital service provisioning; content awareness, context awareness and user-awareness. In the publication a signalling system scheme is proposed for configuring the service delivery infrastructure for complex user-centric digital service provisioning.

In [54], user-centric provisioning of mobile service offerings in wireless environments is studied, and a layered architecture based on agents and Web Services is proposed as an approach for facilitating and simplifying the design of user-centric service offerings. In [55], the context-aware service provisioning model for smart phones, with a special focus in recommending service offerings to users, is described.

In [56], a user-centric service provisioning approach and service creation environment over next-generation telecommunication networks and the Internet has been contributed, including a description of the OPUCE architecture and prototype platform enabling user-centric service creation. In [56], the role of telecom operators enabling user-centric service creation as part of their business is highlighted. In the early days of mobile service, telecommunication operators had a role in creation and provisioning of specialised service offerings for their clients and consumers. However, after wireless internet access became a de-facto feature in mobile devices, the Internet-mediated service provisioning and application stores have diminished the role of telecommunication operators in digital service provisioning.

User-centricity has also been studied as a generic design approach with an emphasis on user consideration and user participation throughout the design process stages [57]–[59]. For avoidance of doubt, the term and concept of person centricity used in this work does not refer to, or include, assumption of a user-centric design approach with active user participation in the design process. However, it is not excluded either as a design philosophy and process to be adopted in the design and development of person-centric digital service offerings.

Personalisation, context awareness and adaptation are the three elements generally present in person-centric digital service provisioning, complementing the

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primary value co-creation target and interaction between the digital service offering and the user of the offering. The remainder of this section provides a brief overview of the existing research streams on personalisation, context awareness and adaptation regarding the concepts, with an analysis in relation to this work.

In [32], the term personalize is defined as ‘To make personal’. As a derived term, personalisation generally refers to the process of making something personal. In the context of digital service provisioning, personalisation refers to the process of making the digital service personal to its user. Personalisation has been studied in many contexts, but regarding the scope of this