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Abstarct Seminarwrd

The document discusses the importance of context-aware computing in designing user interfaces that adapt to various situations in real-time, enhancing user experience. It contrasts traditional Human-Computer Interaction methods with context-aware systems, which can optimize interfaces based on the user's current context, such as location and activity. Practical examples, such as SatNav and automatic lighting systems, illustrate how context-awareness can be applied to improve functionality and user interaction.

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6 views3 pages

Abstarct Seminarwrd

The document discusses the importance of context-aware computing in designing user interfaces that adapt to various situations in real-time, enhancing user experience. It contrasts traditional Human-Computer Interaction methods with context-aware systems, which can optimize interfaces based on the user's current context, such as location and activity. Practical examples, such as SatNav and automatic lighting systems, illustrate how context-awareness can be applied to improve functionality and user interaction.

Uploaded by

kshitishbehuria4
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction

When we aim to create applications, devices, and systems that are easy to
use, it is essential to understand the context of use. With context-aware
computing, we now have the means of considering the situation of use not
only in the design process, but in real time while the device is in use.
In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), we traditionally aim to understand
the user and the context of use and create designs that support the major
anticipated use cases and situations of use. In Context-Aware Computing
on the other hand, making use of context causes a fundamental change: We
can support more than one context of use that are equally optimal. At
runtime � when the user interacts with the application � the system can
decide what the current context of use is and provide a user interface
specifically optimized for this context. With context-awareness, the job
of designing the user interface typically becomes more complex as the
number of situations and contexts which the system will be used in
usually increases. In contrast to traditional systems, we do not design
for a single -or a limited set - of contexts of use; Instead, design for
several contexts. The advantage of this approach is that we can provide
optimized user interfaces for a range of contexts.

Let us assume the following example: You are asked to design a user
interface for a wrist watch. In your research you find out that people
will use it indoors and outdoors, they will use it in the dark as well as
in sunlight, they will use it when they run to catch the train as well as
when they sit in a lecture and are bored. As a good user interface
designer, you end up with many ideas for an exciting user interface for
each situation: For example, when the user is running to catch the train,
the user interface should show the time highlighting the minutes and
seconds in a very large font. On the other hand, when the user is
attending a lecture the user interface should show the time in a very
small font, and additionally provide a funny quote. In a traditional
design process, you would realize � after creating your sketches and
design briefs � that you have to decide which one of your ideas for a
user interface you want to use. You would realize that supporting all the
situations in a single design will not work. The typical result is a
compromise � which often loses much of the edge of the ideas you
initially came up with. However, if you take the approach of Context-
Aware Computing, you could create a context-aware watch, where you
combine all your situation-optimized designs in a single design. If you
designed your watch so that it could recognize each of the situations
that you had found in your initial research (e.g. running to catch the
train, attending a lecture, etc), your watch could reconfigure itself
based on the recognized context.
Context-Awareness
In the early days of computing, the context in which systems were used
was strongly defined by the place in which computers were set up, see
Figure 3. Personal computers were used in office environments or on
factory floors. The context of use did not change much, and there was
little variance in the situations surrounding the computer. Hence, there
was no need to adapt to different environments. Many traditional methods
in the discipline of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), such as contextual
inquiry or task analysis, have their origin in this period and are most
easy to use in situations that do not constantly change. With the rise of
mobile computers and ubiquitous computing, this changed. Users take
computers with them and use them in many different situations, see Figure
4.

At the beginning of the mobile computing era, in the late 80s and 90s,
the central theme was how to make mobility transparent for the user,
automatically providing the same service everywhere. Here, transparent
meant that the user did not have to care about changes in the environment
and could rely on the same functionality independent of the environment.

In the early 90s, research into ubiquitous computing at Xerox PARC caused
a shift in thinking. In addition to making functionality transparent,
such as providing network connectivity throughout a campus without the
user realizing the hand-over between different networks, researchers
discovered the potential to exploit the context of use as a resource to
which systems can be adapted. In his 1994 paper at the Workshop on Mobile
Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA), Bill Schilit introduces the
concept of context-aware computing and describes it as follows:

Such context-aware software adapts according to the location of use, the


collection of nearby people, hosts, and accessible devices, as well as to
changes to such things over time. A system with these capabilities can
examine the computing environment and react to changes to the
environment.

-- Schilit et al 1994

The basic ideas is that mobile devices can provide different services in
different contexts � where context is strongly related to the location of
a device.

Much of the initial research of context-aware computing hence focused on


location-aware systems. In this sense, the widely-used satellite
navigation systems in cars today are context-aware systems. However,
context is more than location, as we argue in (Schmidt et al 1999) and
throughout this chapter.
Practical application :
1.
SatNav as context-aware system
In a Satellite Navigation System (SatNav), the current location is the
primary contextual parameter that is used to automatically adjust the
visualization (e.g. map, arrows, directions�) to the user�s current
location. An example is shown in Figure 5. However, looking at current
commercial systems, much more context information is used and much of
visualization has been changed. In addition to the current GPS position,
contextual parameters may include the time of day, light conditions, the
traffic situation on the calculated route or the user�s preferred places.
Beyond the visualization and whether or not to switch on the backlight,
the calculated route can be influenced by context, e.g. to avoid
potentially busy streets at that time of day.
2.
Automatic light as context-aware system
At house entrances and in hotel hallways automatic lights have become
common. These systems can also be seen as simple context-aware systems.
The contextual parameters taken into account are the current light
conditions and if there is motion in the vicinity. The adaptation
mechanism is fairly simple. If the situation detected is that it is dark
and that there is someone moving, the light will be switched on. The
light will then be on as long as the person moves, and after a period
where no motion is detected, the light will switch off again. Similarly,
the light will switch off if it is not dark anymore.

These simple examples outline the basic principle of a context-aware


system. In Figure 6 a reference architecture for context-aware computing
systems is shown. Sensors provide data about activities and events in the
real world. Perception algorithms will make sense of these stimuli and
classify the situations into context. Based on the observed context,
actions of the system will be triggered.

Using context in applications and user interfaces


When sensory information is available, and a given context can be determined
as a result, various functions and behaviours of systems and applications
can be linked to contexts. As mentioned earlier, the main motivation for
calculating/establishing a given context is to increase a system�s
understanding of its surrounding environment. This enables the designer to
create systems that act differently in different contexts, and if they are
well-designed they match the user�s expectations in this context, i.e.
an awareness match cf. Figure 11.
Different behaviours can be designed on different levels within a system and
range from low-level functionality (e.g. selecting the most appropriate
network protocol for the current context), to application behaviour and
supported functions (e.g. a mobile device used within the company network
may access all company documents, whereas the same device used outside the
company may only access a subset of documents), to changes on a user
interfaces level (e.g. the zoom level of a map is dependent on the speed
with which a car is driving). Often it is hard to clearly discriminate in
which category such adaptive behaviour falls.

We generally discriminate between the following types of context-awareness:


* Context-adaptive systems - proactive applications, function triggers,
and adaptive applications
* Adaptive and context-aware user interfaces
* Managing interruptions based on situations
* Sharing context and context communication
* Generated data for metadata and implicitly user-generated content
* Context-aware resource management
These basic categories help in the design of context-based applications. In
some cases there may not be a clear discrimination between them, or they may
be combined in a single application. As early as in the original paper by
Schilit et al (1994), a discussion and a table of how context can be used
was included. They included a table where they discriminated between what is
context-dependent (information or commands) on one side and how context is
used (manually or automatically) on the other side. This view of context-
aware applications mainly reflects the first and the last types from the
above list, i.e. proactive applications and resource management.

It is highly recommended to read this paper by Bill Schilit et al (Schilit


et al 1994) as it is the cornerstone and central foundation of context-aware
computing. If you are interested in more details on the original work on
context-awareness, you may want to read Bill Schilit's PhD thesis.

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