Runner up - ACPHIS IS Doctoral Thesis Award 2007

The Faculty of Information Technology's Research Fellow,  Dr Stephen Smith, has been awarded second place (runner up) in the ACPHIS Information Systems Doctoral Thesis Award Competition for 2007 for his dissertation entitled "Online vicarious-experience: Using technology to help consumers evaluate physical products over the Internet". The thesis was developed in conjunction with Professor Steve Howard and Professor Robert Johnston, and the School of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.

The thesis examines how technologies can be used to describe products. Product displays are classified into four categories: attribute-based description (catalog), self-discovery (simulate inspection), assisted discovey (simulated shop assistant), and other-person discovery (online community), and then examine the effectiveness of some examples of these technologies, focusing on how attitudes towards the product and the technology interact to influence the informativeness of a display.

Further information about ACPHIS (the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems) and the award is available at http://www.acphis.org.au/

The panel of judges wrote: “This thesis was the unanimous choice as the runner-up to best Australian Information Systems PhD for 2006/2007. It was a study of the use of technology to help consumers evaluate physical products over the internet using the experimental method. It was very tightly written and addressed a problem of great relevance to industry.”

The award ceremony was at the Australian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2007) on December 7,  whilst Dr Smith was in North America to present a paper at the International Conference on Information Systems.

The Faculty of Information Technology congratulates Dr Smith on his achievement.