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Perspectives on engineering more usable context-aware systems

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Abstract

The expectations of the abilities of context-aware systems (C-AS) often differ from reality. It becomes difficult to program contextual services that react adequately to the circumstantial needs of users as developers need to know, beforehand: the set of contextual states that may exist, what information could accurately determine a contextual state within that set, and what appropriate action should be taken in that particular state. Although there exist many frameworks and tools which support the design and implementation of C-AS, there is less conceptual help for developers to inform them of what contextual situations and services are appropriate (or feasible) to be implemented. This report reviews the state-of-the-art conceptualisation of context, which is more focused on the representational interpretation of the concept, to introduce a perspective that also acknowledges its interactional interpretation. A combination of revised and new definitions is introduced, which give key insights for the development of more useful C-AS. By acknowledging situations as a dynamic phenomenon that arises from action (interaction), and needs to be understood by the developers, it facilitates the analysis of these subjective interpretations into programming constructs (representation). The conceptualisation is also complemented with a set of guidelines for developers, an illustration of their usage, and a further discussion on the future directions for the engineering of more usable C-AS. The introduced conceptualisation is targeted towards the creation of an open-source tool supported framework for the engineering of C-AS.

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Notes

  1. Particularly referring to Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Intelligent Environments, Ambient Intelligence, and Ambient Assisted Living.

  2. POSEIDON stands for PersOnalised Smart Environments to increase Inclusion of people with DOwn’s syNdrome.

  3. A philosophical tradition related to the study of phenomena, or things, as they appear in a first-person experience, or consciousness.

  4. A philosophical system that recognises only that which can be scientifically verified.

  5. Note that the listed implications will be referenced as [\(I_1\)], [\(I_2.1\)], and [\(I_2.2\)] along the rest of the report. [\(I_1\)] and [\(I_2\)] appear in Greenberg (2001), while [\(I_2.1\)], and [\(I_2.2\)] are reflections of the authors of this paper.

  6. 130 British families were contacted for completing them, and these were composed of at least one family member with Down’s syndrome. The respondent population was divided into people with Down’s syndrome (primary users) and carers of people with Down’s syndrome (secondary users). A total of 52 responses from potential secondary users and 29 from potential primary users were obtained. Each group had a different format of questionnaire. That prepared for primary users was an “easy-to-read” version, in which they were asked only about the different services. Also, this group was helped by their carers during the process. The questionnaire for the group of secondary users included questions about the situations and the services.

  7. https://openweathermap.org/api

  8. https://api.tfl.gov.uk

  9. The suggested signal noise-to-ratio value is known to be accurate for this purpose.

  10. The folder rcase/rcase/target/ of the rcase project contains a jmdac file, which is a module that can be installed in the Modelio tool v3.7.0 (Modeliosoft, 1991b) following the instructions in (Modeliosoft, 1991c).

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Acknowledgements

To Tony Clark for initiating the discussion on how to distinguish simple data from context information and Dean Kramer for his useful ideas in the bus transportation examples. To Julian Hallett for his support running the main questionnaires of this report. To the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their insights. The research leading to these results has been partly supported by the POSEIDON project funded by the European Union (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement Number 610840.

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  1. Research Group on Development of Intelligent Environments, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT, UK

    Unai Alegre-Ibarra, Juan Carlos Augusto & Carl Evans

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  1. Unai Alegre-Ibarra
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Correspondence to Unai Alegre-Ibarra.

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Alegre-Ibarra, U., Augusto, J.C. & Evans, C. Perspectives on engineering more usable context-aware systems. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 9, 1593–1609 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-018-0863-7

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