Choompol Boonmee and Tawa Khampachua
possible solution to fit each context. We call this software modification to fit a specific context‘ contextualization’. The contextualization of legacy software improves user acceptant and intention to use, thus maximizes the benefit realization. Since web based software modification affects all users immediately both positively and negatively, it is considerably complicated and requires significant investment. In this paper we introduce a web based software modification technique which can be done easier, cheaper and faster without modification of the legacy web application software. There are four sections in this paper. After the introduction, the concept of contextualization and benefit realization is described in the second section. Web page client side modification technique is introduced for the contextualization in third section. Some field studies are mentioned in the fourth section. The last section is the conclusions.
2. Contextualization and benefit realization
Presently deployed software is typically effective for some servants under some circumstances but does not fit all. This effectiveness influences users ' acceptance and becomes an important limitation to wider utilization of software tools and maximize benefits from ICT investment. Normally software is designed to broadly cover all core business and data entries required by the service. However its users may feel different degree of effectiveness if their use contexts are different. Therefore to maximize its benefits, effective contextualization of software requires individual software modification for each context.
Mostly deployed software systems were developed using web page technology due to its deployment simplicity. It consists of two parts; client side software and server side software as shown in figure 1. For client side software general purposed web page browsers can be used. For server side, centralized server software is deployed using various development tools; ASP, JSP, PHP and etc. They communicate to each other using simple request‐response styled protocol called http.
Figure 1: Web based centralized software is being used by users among various contexts
Data entry web page typically includes text input fields, selection fields of multiple choices and so on. For text input field, users are required to type text data for the corresponding information entity through keyboard. In some specific contexts of use, its value could be predefined for all information records. For example, in the case of data entry of address,‘ province name’ can be set to a fixed known value under the use of a specific context. Some text input fields can be obtained automatically by using programmatic data processing, calculation or using external data source. Reducing or automating known value text input fields improves efficiency, effectiveness, user acceptance and intention to use. Some multiple choices styled input fields have too many choices under a specific context. Reducing their choices also improves efficiency, effectiveness, user acceptance and intention to use then maximize the benefit.
To improve efficiency, effectiveness, user acceptance and intention to use as mentioned above, software modification is required to fit each context of use. Figure 2 illustrates three contexts of use; context # 1, context # 2 and context # 3. The server side web application software is modified to contextualize each context. However modifying legacy web application on server side requires a significant investment due to many reasons; poor documentation, poor source code management, personalized scripting difficulty and etc. In this paper we propose a technique of client side web page modification to customize data entry to fit various contexts and to maximize benefit from legacy web page software.
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