Acceptance and use of ubiquitous cities' information services

Recently ubiquitous cities have been developed all over the world. They aim at embedding information and communication technology, information services and digital content in the urban landscape to make the citizens’ everyday lives easier. One of these future-oriented cities is Oulu in Finland. It makes part of the most “intelligent” communities in the world. Oulu offers an information and communication infrastructure based on the UbiOulu project. Interactive screens offer different services and free WLAN is accessible at several places. As information services become more and more complex these days, new evaluation methods need to be developed. The offered services are examined with the help of the ISE Model that will be introduced in this paper. The study will answer the fundamental research questions “Do the citizens of Oulu accept and use the touch screen monoliths of the media poles?” and “Do the citizens of Oulu accept and use the city-wide free WiFi?” The main results are: In times of smartphone use, touch screen monoliths are more or less needless, but city-wide WiFi is essential. Furthermore, it is very important to create appropriate city-specific information content to be distributed by city-specific apps or through social media channels.