An activity-based approach to the design of user assistance in intelligent environments (original) (raw)

Activity-centered ubiquitous computing support to localized activities

This paper presents ActivitySpot, a ubiquitous computing framework for supporting localized activities, i.e., activities strongly associated to a specific physical environment, performed by occasional visitors. The ActivitySpot framework implements an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing, by defining a conceptual model inspired by Activity Theory and implementing a software infrastructure derived from this conceptual model. ActivitySpot has been evaluated by experiments run at different public spaces and results demonstrate the framework's suitability to the targeted type of environment.

Activity Zones for Context-Aware Computing

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003

Location is a primary cue in many context-aware computing systems, and is often represented as a global coordinate, room number, or a set of Euclidean distances to various landmarks. A user's concept of location, however, is often defined in terms of regions in which similar activities occur. We discuss the concept of such regions, which we call activity zones, and suggest that such zones can be used to trigger application actions, retrieve information based on previous context, and present information to users. We show how to semi-automatically partition a space into activity zones based on patterns of observed user location and motion. We describe our system and two implemented example applications whose behavior is controlled by users' entry, exit, and presence in the zones.

Activities, context and ubiquitous computing

Computer Communications, 2003

Context and context-awareness provides computing environments with the ability to usefully adapt the services or information they provide. It is the ability to implicitly sense and automatically derive the user needs that separates context-aware applications from traditionally designed applications, and this makes them more attentive, responsive, and aware of their user's identity, and their user's environment. This paper argues that context-aware applications capable of supporting complex, cognitive activities can be built from a model of context called Activity-Centric Context. A conceptual model of Activity-Centric context is presented. The model is illustrated via a detailed example.

User-centered support to localized activities in ubiquitous computing environments

The design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems must be centered on users' activity in order to bring computing systems closer to people. The adoption of an activity-centered approach to the design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems should consider: a) how humans naturally accomplish an activity; and b) how computing artifacts from both the local and personal domains should contribute to the accomplishment of an activity. This work particularly focuses on localized activities performed by occasional visitors, i.e., activities having a strong association with a specific physical environment, which may be visited by people who are not accustomed to it. We are investigating how ubiquitous computing environments can provide user-centered support to localized activities, by exploring activity specification models and mechanisms allowing for the integration between local and personal environments.

Exploring activity-based ubiquitous computing: interaction styles, models and tool support

2006

Activity-based computing is a promising paradigm for ubiquitous computing. By providing a consistent framework and structural view for integrating ubicomp technologies into natural human activities, activity-based computing can better facilitate our day-today lives and allow ubicomp technologies that are sustainable in the dynamic, complex world in which we live. In this position paper, we surface several aspects of activity-based computing. We first briefly describe what activity-based computing is. We discuss our early ideas on an activity framework for structuring ubicomp technologies and representing interaction contexts. Next, we discuss the interaction styles and models of this new paradigm. We then discuss tool support for activity-based computing. In particular, we give an overview of our ongoing work on analysis/design tools supporting early stage prototyping of activity-based ubiquitous computing.

Requirements of Task Modeling in Ambient Intelligent Environment

2012

User tasks modeling has been the focus of many research works either for designing user interfaces suitable to given use cases or for identifying the current task of the user in order to assist him/her. The problem of user tasks modeling has been widely addressed within the context of GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces). In this paper, we present an overview of several existing task models and we discuss the specificities of user tasks modeling in the context of Ambient Intelligent Environments, which are mainly place-related tasks, device-related tasks and the possible errors occurring while performing a task. Then, we discuss the limitations of the classical user tasks models and depict the requirements of a task model specific to an interaction with an ambient environment.

The probabilistic activity toolkit: Towards enabling activity-aware computer interfaces

2003

Emerging HCI techniques require the ability to recognize activities that occur in the physical world. Systems that recognize home activities have been limited in the variety of activities they recognize, their robustness to noise, and their ease of use. We present a toolkit (PROACT) for activity recognition that addresses these problems by leveraging three novel techniques: automatically mining text documents and the web for activity structure; recognizing object use via Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology; and combining these two inputs to infer user behavior with a flexible and scalable, Monte-Carlo based inference engine. As an initial evaluation, we successfully applied our system to a known difficult problem from health care: recognizing multiple "Activities of Daily Living" (ADLs) in a real home environment. Promising results from a user study validate PROACT's approach.

An Activity-Centered Wearable Computing Infrastructure for Intelligent Environment Applications

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

There are many research efforts that focus on converting everyday environments into intelligent and computationally active environments that support and enhance the abilities of its occupants in executing their activities. Such environments must have the ability to recognize the activities performed by its occupant, maintain a real-time model of the environment, address the occupant's privacy and personalization issues, and provide interaction capabilities in a way the occupant would with other people. In this paper we present an activity-centered wearable computing infrastructure for designing intelligent environment applications based on the occupant's usage and storage of everyday objects in that environment. Four components namely object manager, situative space monitor, activity recognizer and egocentric interaction manager are introduced and described in detail. A prototypical intelligent home environment capable of supporting 15 Activities of Daily Living with an activity recognition precision of 92% is presented as a "proof of concept" in a virtual reality (VR) simulated home environment.