A framework for the design of awareness support in collaborative situations of implicit interaction

The application of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) approach implies the use of new styles of computer-human interaction as well as the need of supporting activities of collaborative nature. In these contexts, the concept of implicit interaction refers to those actions that a computer considers as inputs although the user has not intended to generate an input in an explicit way. In order to provide AmI scenarios in which collaborative activities takes place with computational support, classic concepts about computer-human interaction are not enough, for example, when giving support to awareness. Thus, in this paper a framework for the design of awareness support in collaborative AmI applications is proposed. This framework takes the work by Gutwin and Greenberg on explicit interaction as a starting point and intends to serve as a design guide for developers who need to create such a system. Also, this work settles the basis for a future model-based development method for collaborative AmI systems that takes into account awareness issues.