Daily Note: Context-Aware Computing

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness”

Abowd, G.D., Dey, A.K., Brown, P.J., Davies, N., Smith, M., Steggles, P. (1999). Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness. In: Gellersen, HW. (eds) Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing. HUC 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1707. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48157-5_29

  1. Human Communication Patterns and Computing
    • Humans excel at conveying ideas due to
      • Rich language
      • Common understanding of the world
      • Implicit understanding of situations (context)
    • Context increases conversational bandwidth in human-human interaction
    • Computers lack mechanisms to leverage context effectively in human-computer interaction
    • Increased mobility creates more dynamic user contexts
    • Context includes user location, people, and surrounding objects
  2. Goals of Context-Aware Computing
    • Simplify interaction between users and computers
    • Avoid burdening users with excessive, conscious input
    • Collect and use contextual information automatically
    • Allow application researchers to determine relevant context and its use
  3. Definition of Context
    • Context characterizes the situation of an entity (person, place, or object)
    • Includes both explicit and implicit indications by users
  4. Key Features of Context-Aware Applications
    • Analyze “who,” “where,” “when,” and “what” to infer “why”
    • Primary types of context
      • Location
      • Identity
      • Activity
      • Time
    • Secondary context is indexed by primary context attributes
  5. Definition of a Context-Aware System
    • Uses context to provide relevant information or services
    • Relevance depends on the user’s task
  6. Categories of Context-Aware Features
    • Presentation
      • Displaying relevant information or services
    • Automation
      • Executing services automatically
    • Tagging
      • Attaching context to information for later retrieval
  7. Context Widgets and Context Servers
    • Context widget
      • Acquire and generalize specific context types
    • Context servers
      • Support primary context types (activity, identity, location, time)
      • Facilitate indexing and retrieval of secondary context
      • Enable dynamic relationships between entities sharing context
  8. Architecture Requirements for Context Awareness
    • Minimum support for primary context types
    • Indexing secondary context by primary types
    • Context comparison for creating dynamic entity relationships (e.g., identifying people in the same room)