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Publications

2025

The role of digital touchpoints in the five-star hospitality customer journey

Authors
Zabjesky, C; Barbosa, B; Neves, S;

Publication
Effective Marketing and Consumer Behavior Tactics for High-End Products

Abstract
The main aim of this chapter is to study the digital touchpoints influencing customers' decisions in the five-star hospitality industry. This chapter adopted a qualitative methodology in the form of semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest the preeminent role of online travel agencies and hotel websites as the two most powerful touchpoints influencing the decision-making of the customer and serving as the principal means of making the reservation at the hotel. It also stresses the growing influence of customer-owned touchpoints, particularly user-generated content, in influencing customer perception. This research emphasizes the significance of personalized engagement in influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Overall, the study presents practical managerial implications for hoteliers, offering insights on how to effectively interact with customers at each stage of their journey, thereby enhancing both service delivery and overall guest experience. © 2025, IGI Global Scientific Publishing. All rights reserved.

2025

GAMFLEW: serious game to teach white-box testing

Authors
Silva, M; Paiva, ACR; Mendes, A;

Publication
SOFTWARE QUALITY JOURNAL

Abstract
Software testing plays a fundamental role in software engineering, involving the systematic evaluation of software to identify defects, errors, and vulnerabilities from the early stages of the development process. Education in software testing is essential for students and professionals, as it promotes quality and favours the construction of reliable software solutions. However, motivating students to learn software testing may be a challenge. To overcome this, educators may incorporate some strategies into the teaching and learning process, such as real-world examples, interactive learning, and gamification. Gamification aims to make learning software testing more engaging for students by creating a more enjoyable experience. One approach that has proven effective is to use serious games. This paper presents a novel serious game to teach white-box testing test case design techniques, named GAMFLEW (GAMe For LEarning White-box testing). It describes the design, game mechanics, and its implementation. It also presents a preliminary evaluation experiment with students to assess the usability, learnability, and perceived problems, among other aspects. The results obtained are encouraging.

2025

Model compression techniques in biometrics applications: A survey

Authors
Caldeira, E; Neto, PC; Huber, M; Damer, N; Sequeira, AF;

Publication
INFORMATION FUSION

Abstract
The development of deep learning algorithms has extensively empowered humanity's task automatization capacity. However, the huge improvement in the performance of these models is highly correlated with their increasing level of complexity, limiting their usefulness in human-oriented applications, which are usually deployed in resource-constrained devices. This led to the development of compression techniques that drastically reduce the computational and memory costs of deep learning models without significant performance degradation. These compressed models are especially essential when implementing multi-model fusion solutions where multiple models are required to operate simultaneously. This paper aims to systematize the current literature on this topic by presenting a comprehensive survey of model compression techniques in biometrics applications, namely quantization, knowledge distillation and pruning. We conduct a critical analysis of the comparative value of these techniques, focusing on their advantages and disadvantages and presenting suggestions for future work directions that can potentially improve the current methods. Additionally, we discuss and analyze the link between model bias and model compression, highlighting the need to direct compression research toward model fairness in future works.

2025

Clustering and Classification of Compositional Data Using Distributions Defined on the Hypersphere

Authors
Figueiredo, A;

Publication
Springer Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics

Abstract
We propose an approach to cluster and classify compositional data. We transform the compositional data into directional data using the square root transformation. To cluster the compositional data, we apply the identification of a mixture of Watson distributions on the hypersphere and to classify the compositional data into predefined groups, we apply Bayes rules based on the Watson distribution to the directional data. We then compare our clustering results with those obtained in hierarchical clustering and in the K-means clustering using the log-ratio transformations of the data and compare our classification results with those obtained in linear discriminant analysis using log-ratio transformations of the data. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

2025

Engineering a Sustainable Future with EPS@ISEP

Authors
Malheiro, B; Guedes, P;

Publication
World Sustainability Series

Abstract
The challenge of engineering education is to transform engineering students into agents of innovation and well-being. In addition to solid scientific and technical knowledge, critical thinking, problem-solving and interpersonal competencies, it implies the ability to design and implement solutions supported by ethical and sustainability principles. With this goal in mind, the European Project Semester (EPS) provides a student-centred project-based learning framework. It is offered by a group of European higher education institutions, including the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), the engineering school of the Polytechnic of Porto. Students work in teams of four to six, from different fields of study and nationalities, to design solutions to problems that affect individuals, society or the planet, taking into account the state of the art, the market and the ethical and sustainability implications of their decisions. These solutions are then implemented in a proof-of-concept prototype. Most of the projects address problems in education, the environment, food production and smart cities and have a strong educational, ethical and sustainability drive, encouraging students to develop sustainability competencies. This work analyses team papers of illustrative EPS@ISEP projects searching for evidences of the development of sustainability competencies. The proposed method maps keywords related to the sixteen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to the contents of team papers by applying natural language processing and reusing the list of SDG keywords proposed by Auckland University. The results confirm EPS@ISEP fosters sustainability competencies in engineering undergraduates. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

2025

The Role of Social Media in the Internationalization of B2B Companies

Authors
Catarina Pereira Teixeira; Zaíla Maria Oliveira; Belem Barbosa;

Publication
Marketing Strategies for the Internationalization of Businesses and Brands

Abstract
The main aim of this chapter is to explore the role of social media in the internationalization of business-to-business (B2B) companies, addressing a remaining gap in the literature. It includes a qualitative study, where data from semi-structured interviews was subject to thematic content analysis. The study found that social media acts as a facilitator of internationalization in the B2B setting. While social media alone does not determine the success of internationalization efforts, it has become an essential tool for firms seeking to engage with global markets and maintain a competitive edge.The study provides relevant insights for managers, recommending that businesses should track social media performance to understand its impact on internationalization efforts and adjust strategies accordingly.

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