The Context Modelling Toolkit: A Unified Multi-layered Context Modelling Approach (original) (raw)
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A Multi-layered Context Modelling Approach for End Users, Expert Users and Programmers
Context awareness plays an important role in smart environments and embedded interactions. In order to increase user satisfaction and acceptance, context-aware solutions should be controllable by end users. Over the last few years we have therefore witnessed an emerging trend of visual programming tools for context-aware applications based on simple "if this then that" rules. Unfortunately, existing solutions do not support the easy reuse of the "this" part in other rules. Further, the desired level of control varies among individuals. In order to let users choose the right level of automation and control, we propose a multi-layered context modelling approach distinguishing between end users, expert users and programmers. We report on our ongoing development of the Context Modelling Toolkit (CMT) consisting of the necessary context modelling concepts as well as a rule-based context processing engine. We further discuss an initial design of the graphical user interface for the presented multi-layered context modelling approach.
The context toolkit: Aiding the development of context-aware applications
Workshop on Software Engineering for wearable …, 2000
Context is an important, yet poorly understood and poorly utilized source of information in interactive computing. It will be of particular importance in the new millennium as users move away from their desktops and into settings where their contexts are changing rapidly. Context is difficult to use because, unlike other forms of user input, there is no common, reusable way to handle it. As a result, context-aware applications have been built in an ad hoc manner, making it difficult to build new applications or evolve existing ones. To make it easier to build these applications, we have created the Context Toolkit, a toolkit that provides some important abstractions and support for the field of context-aware computing.
A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context …
Human-Computer Interaction, 2001
Computing devices and applications are now used beyond the desktop, in diverse environments, and this trend toward ubiquitous computing is accelerating. One challenge that remains in this emerging research field is the ability to enhance the behavior of any application by informing it of the context of its use. By context, we refer to any information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment. Context-aware applications promise richer and easier interaction, but the
2001
Computing devices and applications are now used beyond the desktop, in diverse environments, and this trend toward ubiquitous computing is accelerating. One challenge that remains in this emerging research field is the ability to enhance the behavior of any application by informing it of the context of its use. By context, we refer to any information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment.
iCAP: Interactive prototyping of context-aware applications
Pervasive Computing, 2006
Although numerous context-aware applications have been developed and there have been technological advances for acquiring contextual information, it is still difficult to develop and prototype interesting context-aware applications. This is largely due to the lack of programming support available to both programmers and end-users. This lack of support closes off the context-aware application design space to a larger group of users. We present iCAP, a system that allows end-users to visually design a wide variety of context-aware applications, including those based on if-then rules, temporal and spatial relationships and environment personalization. iCAP allows users to quickly prototype and test their applications without writing any code. We describe the study we conducted to understand end-users' mental models of context-aware applications, how this impacted the design of our system and several applications that demonstrate iCAP's richness and ease of use. We also describe a user study performed with 20 end-users, who were able to use iCAP to specify every application that they envisioned, illustrating iCAP's expressiveness and usability.
Designing and Building Context-Aware Applications
2001
Abstract User interfaces must adapt to the growing dissemination of computing power in our everyday environment. Computing devices and applications are now used beyond the desktop, in diverse environments, and this trend is accelerating. By taking context into account, context-aware applications promise richer and easier interaction.
Supporting end user programming of context-aware applications
2003
The emergence of context-aware applications, those that take into account their context of use, has shown the ability for rich interaction with the surrounding environment. However, although some of these applications have been developed, the proliferation of context-aware applications is inhibited by the lack of programming support to rapidly develop them.
The context toolkit: aiding the development of context-enabled applications
1999
Context-enabled applications are just emerging and promise richer interaction by taking environmental context into account. However, they are difficult to build due to their distributed nature and the use of unconventional sensors. The concepts of toolkits and widget libraries in graphical user interfaces has been tremendously successful, allowing programmers to leverage off existing building blocks to build interactive systems more easily. We introduce the concept of context widgets that mediate between the environment and the application in the same way graphical widgets mediate between the user and the application. We illustrate the concept of context widgets with the beginnings of a widget library we have developed for sensing presence, identity and activity for people and things. We assess the success of our approach with two example context-enabled applications we have built and an existing application to which we have added contextsensing capabilities.
Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness
CHI 2000 workshop on the what, who, where, when …, 2000
The use of context is important in interactive applications. It is particularly important for applications where the user's context is changing rapidly, such as in both handheld and ubiquitous computing. In order to better understand how we can use context and facilitate the building of context-aware applications, we need to more fully understand what constitutes a contextaware application and what context is. Towards this goal, we have surveyed existing work in context-aware computing. In this paper, we provide an overview of the results of this survey and, in particular, definitions and categories of context and context-aware. We conclude with recommendations for how this better understanding of context inform a framework for the development of context-aware applications.