An ISD study of Extreme Information Management challenges in IoT Systems - Case : The “OpenSenses”eHealth/Smarthome project

Abstract: Context: Internet of Things (IoT) is an exciting new development and opportunity in the global ICT field. In short, IoT means that all objects will have their own IP address and be constantly online, connected to other similar actors. After this expansion Internet will not only be humans communicate with humans (H2H) more but machines will automatically communicate with machines (M2M) and humans (H2M) as well . The already today big amounts of data will become extreme as a result of this and it will require new and smarter ways of designing future ICT systems. Many more things needs to be taken into account for these demanding ICT development projects to fall out in productive ways. As of right now it does not seem to be clear to developers what all matters need to be looked at and in that order and why. Clear IoT systems design guidelines, templates and view-models are missing or they are at least not available to the mainstream designers. Objectives: In this study the objective is to investigate a) what views and concepts would need to be taken into account for developers to design better Information Systems for IoT type of setups and b) what kind of an ISD framework such design could result in. Methods: In this thesis a number of research methods have been used, such as: a) conducting a broad literature review on related IS concepts; b) analyzing how the found concepts tie togehter; c) compiling an ISD framework based on the concepts and 2) apply the ISD framework on a real eHealth case. Results: The result of the study was that there is a need for a new ISD framework for larger systems design based on a stakeholder centric viewpoint. This work puts forward an example of such an ISD framework. Conclusions: Designing and developing large Information Systems for IoT setups is a very demanding task and a logical/clear design frameworks will help in this matter. If nothing else, a predefined view-model will help in asking the right (kind) of questions and keeping the communication about the objectives on track and focused. eHealth is a field where IoT systems should be implemented but if it's not done in the correct way taking matters like stakeholders objectives and IPR's on both systems and data into account very little productive results will be achieved.