Abstract
Tremendous growth in Internet of Things (IoT) prompted a dramatic development in sensor networks and, in addition, the convenience in all aspects of human lives. Better lives can be envisioned with the well deployment of sensors (or smart objects) in which most of them have been around us, and better lives, apparently, rely on the quality of services. This phenomenon implies that quality challenges have come to light in various domains, and the attitude towards quality has come under renewed scrutiny. As IoT-empowered services became increasingly open and diversified, changes in user expectations regarding quality, for which the importance of making quality assurance more human-centric by taking an approach based on the perspective of users and anticipating their needs emerges, are consequently emphasized. Quality does not mean the quality of a service itself or whether a service complies with certain specifications. Instead, it means the users’ perception of quality or their expectations of the level of quality. Therefore, understanding of user experience that spans a wide spectrum of topics becomes a challenge to prompt the service provision.
During the working period, we received many submissions from at least 10 different countries where the corresponding authors were majorly counted by the deadline for manuscript submission. All these submissions were considered significant in the area of the promising services for the development of smart world; however, only two-fifths of them passed the first-round examination which is based on a strict and rigorous review policy. After a two-round review process, only a few of them were accepted for being included in this issue. These accepted papers mainly look at our issue from the perspectives of ubiquitous computing, green computing, quality of service, human-centric computing, smart environment/objects, Internet of Things, awareness science and engineering, recommender system, e-government/service/learning, semantic web, security, and privacy, which brought lively and focused discussions to the public.
The scenario and/or systems that prompt the implementation of quality of service provision have drawn attention to the public and indeed caused great changes to our daily lives. With the success in the organization of this special issue, it becomes possible for researchers (and interested readers as well) who have been engaged in this area or related areas to receive state-of-the-art information, gain experiences, and further bring about the benefits in this promising area of study. We, the guest editors, also envision the advanced stimulation of development of innovative services and solutions in this area can be achieved in the coming future.