A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications
A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications
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DOI：
10.1207/s15327051hci16234_02
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发表时间：
2001-01-01
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Salber, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dey, AK;Abowd, GD;Salber, D
计算设备和应用程序现在被用于桌面之外的各种环境中，并且这种普适计算的趋势正在加速。在这个新兴的研究领域中仍然存在的一个挑战是通过告知其使用的上下文来增强任何应用程序的行为的能力。通过上下文，我们指的是表征与人类、应用程序和周围环境之间的交互相关的情况的任何信息。上下文感知应用程序承诺更丰富和更容易的交互，但目前在这一领域的研究状态仍然远离这一愿景。这是由于3个主要问题：（a）上下文的概念仍然是不好定义，（B）缺乏概念模型和方法来帮助驱动上下文感知应用程序的设计，以及（c）没有可用的工具来启动上下文感知应用程序的开发。在这篇锚文章中，我们将依次解决这三个问题。我们首先定义上下文，识别上下文信息的类别，并描述上下文感知的应用程序行为。虽然上下文感知计算的全面影响需要理解非常微妙和高层次的上下文概念，但我们将精力集中在可以从物理环境中的传感器自动推断的上下文片段上。然后，我们提出了一个概念性的框架，分离的上下文感知应用程序的上下文的交付和反应的收购和表示。我们已经建立了一个工具包，上下文工具包，实例化这个概念框架，并支持快速开发的上下文感知应用程序的丰富空间。我们说明了有用的概念框架，描述了一些上下文感知的应用程序，已使用上下文工具包的原型。我们还展示了这样一个框架可以支持调查的重要研究挑战，在该领域的上下文感知计算。
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 current state of research in this field is still far removed from that vision. This is due to 3 main problems: (a) the notion of context is still ill defined, (b) there is a lack of conceptual models and methods to help drive the design of context-aware applications, and (c) no tools are available to jump-start the development of context-aware applications. In this anchor article, we address these 3 problems in turn. We first define context, identify categories of contextual information, and characterize context-aware application behavior. Though the full impact of context-aware computing requires understanding very subtle and high-level notions of context, we are focusing our efforts on the pieces of context that can be inferred automatically from sensors in a physical environment. We then present a conceptual framework that separates the acquisition and representation of context from the delivery and reaction to context by a context-aware application. We have built a toolkit, the Context Toolkit that instantiates this conceptual framework and supports the rapid development of a rich space of context-aware applications. We illustrate the usefulness of the conceptual framework by describing a number of context-aware applications that have been prototyped using the Context Toolkit. We also demonstrate how such a framework can support the investigation of important research challenges in the area of context-aware computing.