From Computing and Software Wiki

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Types of Context in HCI 2.1 User Context 2.2 Time Context 2.3 Physical Context 2.4 Computing Context 3 Context-Aware Computing 4 Context-Aware Applications 5 Examples of HCI Contexts 5.1 Mobile Devices 5.2 Consumer Devices 5.3 Business Applications 5.4 World Wide Web 5.5 Collaboration Systems 5.6 Games 6 See Also 7 References 8 Further Reading 9 External Links

Introduction

• Dictionary definition: "the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs"
• Context is the set of environmental states and settings that either determines an application’s behavior or in which an application event occurs and is interesting to the user.
• Context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves.
• What is it?
• How is it used today?
• Why is it useful and necessary?
• When did this become an important field in HCI
• Recent advancements

Types of Context in HCI

Summarize the four main recognized categories of context for HCI

User Context

• The user context(also known as personal context) represents information about the end-user, which interacts with the system.
• This includes information such as the user profile (age, preferences, etc.), the user’s location (e.g. absolute position, indoors, outdoors, etc.) and orientation, nearby objects, the people nearby and the social situation.

Time Context

• The time context covers relevant information related to time such as absolute time, date, day of the week and season.

Physical Context

• The physical context includes everything, which is measurable in the environment of the system with which the user interacts.
• This includes temperatures, noise levels, lighting situations, traffic conditions, etc.

Computing Context

• The computing context contains everything related to computational resources.
• This can include things such as available networks, network bandwidth, communication costs and nearby computational resources such as printers or fax machines.

Context-Aware Computing

Context-Aware Applications

Examples of HCI Contexts

Mobile Devices

Consumer Devices

Business Applications

World Wide Web

Collaboration Systems

Games

See Also

References

• Anind K. Dey and Gregory D. Abowd. Towards a Better Understanding of context and context-awareness. Technical Report GIT-GVU-99-22, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing, June 1999
• Chen, G. and D. Kotz, A Survey of Context-Aware Mobile Computing Research. 2000, Dartmouth College

Further Reading

External Links