Research group for Media, Innovation and Communication Technologies

Cloudfriends - Cloud troubleshooting

About

CloudFriends is a Flemish startup that develops home automatition applications that can be installed on residential gateways (such as set-top boxes, wireless routers,…) of telecommunication companies (e.g. Belgacom, Telenet,…).

With the gateway as a home server telephony providers can offer extra services to their customers and thus prevent customer churn.

One of the applications developed by CloudFriends is a remote file access app that delivers the same services as traditional cloud applications (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud,…). The difference with these existing cloud applications is that CloudFriends enables the end-users to store their data on their residential gateway instead of “in the cloud”. Therefore, data is secured and protected from cloud service providers and potential hackers.

Innovation Goals

The ultimate goal is to optimize the application by means of a Living Lab methodology. By involving potential end-users through the whole scope of this process, the innovation can be molded based on their needs, habits, attitudes and contextual factors.

Moreover, we investigate if such an application can prevent customer churn if offered by telephony providers.

Methodology

In this Living Lab research track, we start with a co-creationsession in which we gain insights in the users’ attitudes towards the use of cloud applications. In this session, a demonstration of the remote file access app is given and subsequently evaluated thoroughly.

Next, three usability and user experience sessions are held to evaluate the looks and the functioning of the application. Between these sessions, the application is reshaped iteratively.

We end with a large scale validation survey based on the findings of both the co-creation and usability sessions. In this online questionnaire, we focus on the end-users’ willingness-to-pay and adoption potential of the remote file access app.

Duration of the project

The project runs from 01/06/2012 – 31/12/2014.

Staff involved

  • Karel Vandenbroucke
  • Dimitri Schuurman

Financed by

  • iMinds