High accuracy context recovery using clustering mechanisms

This paper examines the recovery of user context in indoor environmnents with existing wireless infrastructures to enable assistive systems. We present a novel approach to the extraction of user context, casting the problem of context recovery as an unsupervised, clustering problem. A well known density-based clustering technique, DBSCAN, is adapted to recover user context that includes user motion state, and significant places the user visits from WiFi observations consisting of access point id and signal strength. Furthermore, user rhythms or sequences of places the user visits periodically are derived from the above low level contexts by employing state-of-the-art probabilistic clustering technique, the Latent Dirichiet Allocation (LDA), to enable a variety of application services. Experimental results with real data are presented to validate the proposed unsupervised learning approach and demonstrate its applicability.

HorusCML: context-aware domain-specific visual languages designer

The objective behind building domain-specific visual languages (DSVLs) is to provide users with the most appropriate concepts and notations that best fit with their domain and experience. However, the existing DSVL designers do not support integrating environment and user context information when modeling, editing or viewing DSVL models at different locations, permissions, devices, etc. In this paper, we introduce HorusCML, a context-aware DSVL designer, which supports DSVL experts in integrating necessary context details within their DSVLs. The resultant DSVLs can reflect different facets, layouts, and behaviours according to context it is used in. We show a case study on developing a context-aware data flow diagram DSVL tool using HorusCML.

A smart web service based on the context of things

Combining the Semantic Web and the Ubiquitous Web, Web 3.0 is for things. The Semantic Web enables human knowledge to be machine-readable and the Ubiquitous Web allows Web services to serve any thing, forming a bridge between the virtual world and the real world. By using context, Web services can become smarter-that is, aware of the target things' or applications' physical environments, or situations and respond proactively and intelligently. Existing methods for implementing context-aware Web services on Web 2.0 mainly enumerate different implementations corresponding to different attribute values of the context, in order to improve the Quality of Services (QoS). However, things in the physical world are extremely diverse, which poses new problems for Web services: it is difficult to unify the context of things and to implement a flexible smart Web service for things. This article proposes a novel smart Web service based on the context of things, which is implemented using a REpresentational State Transfer for Things (Thing-REST) style, to tackle the two problems. In a smart Web service, the user's description (semantic context) and sensor reports (sensing context) are two channels for acquiring the context of things which are then employed by ontology services to make the context of things machine-readable. With guidance of domain knowledge services, event detection services can analyze things' needs particularly, well through the context of things. We then propose a Thing-REST style to manage the context of things and user context, and to mashup Web services through three structures (i.e., chain, select, and merge) to implement smart Web services. A smart plant watering-service application demonstrates the effectiveness of our method. © 2012 ACM.

Participatory sensing and education: helping the community mitigate sleep disturbance from traffic noise

Purpose – This paper aims to present a project in Australia, where participants use smartphones to measure the level of traffic noise in their homes. Through the data collected, participants learn if they are subjected to sleep disturbances and, if so, understand how they can manage the issue to protect their health. The project also has a secondary purpose: the local council would like to engage its community through the exercise and be seen as acting on the community’s problems.

Adopting a computational approach to identifying and modelling future development initiatives within the urban context

In 2002 the State Government of Victoria, in partnership with the City of Greater Geelong and Deakin University, initiated and urban design framework to explore development opportunities of a series of redundant industrial sites adjacent to Geelong's central activities area (CAA). One of the objectives of the framework was to explore a range of initiatives based on the expansion of Deakin University Waterfront campus from 700 students to an expected cohort of 5000 students. Working with a set of predefined constructs for different types of city-based user groups, such as net floor space requirements and time/travel distances between facilities, the following paper presents a simple computational approach to assist in identifying, mapping, and spatially exploring different development scenarios.

User-generated content and the changing news cycle

Blogs represent a major development in media consumption and practice.  The Pew Center in the United States reported in mid-2005 that about eight million Americans had created blogs and 32 million read them.  That's equivalent to two-thirds the number of people who read a daily newspaper during a week, a challenging giguew in the context of dwindling circulations.  Blogs represent the start of the 'personal media' revolution, but are only the tip of a range of new media developments.  This paper describes the blog phenomenon and notes its arrival via a series of major new stories.  It suggests we are seeing the emergence of a new news cycle, as blogs and other internet-based media usurp broadcast's role in breaking news.  The paper describes a range of emerging digital journalism forms that make up the 'personal media' revolution.  These include blogs delivered via mobile phones (moblogs); video-based blogs (v-logs); newspapers' use of podcasting to deliver content; and wikis, or peer-generated online content. The media's reaction to this new form of content is described, and the other concludes by looking at the forces driving this new form of journalism.

User mobility prediction in hybrid and ad hoc wireless networks

Next Generation Networks will employ hybrid network architectures using both cellular and ad hoc networking concepts. The vision of real-time
multimedia services requires that mobility management be addressed in a proactive manner. If the user movements can be predicted accurately in a
hybrid network environment then handoff/cluster change, resource reservation and context transfer procedures can be efficiently completed as required by node mobility. In this work we propose a sectorized ad hoc mobility prediction scheme for cluster change prediction. Simulation study of the scheme shows it to be efficient in terms of prediction accuracy and prediction related control overhead despite randomness in user movement.

End-user experience with information in Web-based electronic service : a case study

End-user experience with information presumably considered as one of the prominent factors shaping the adoption of web-based electronic services. User interfacing with large amount of information the rationale is to deduce the effect in the current web-based task environment. Understanding user’s perception on the basis of the prior experience with information may provide insights into what constitutes in driving those perceptions and their effect in the current and future task in web-based electronic services. The paper lays the theoretical context of end-user experience with information and proceeds further in an attempt to distinguish the role in web-based electronic services.

Families as carers-information needs in a cultural context

While the important role of family as a carer has been increasingly recognised in healthcare service provision, particularly for patients with acute or chronic illnesses, the carer’s information needs have not been well understood and adequately supported by current health information systems. In order to effectively provide continuous and home-based care for the patient, a family relative as the primary carer needs sufficient access to medical knowledge and patient’s health information. There are two challenges. First, being a family relative, the primary carer is often a non-medical practitioner. Second, in Australia, many primary carers are family relatives of patients from a non-English speaking background. They are often seen as interpreters in clinical consultation sessions. Their roles and responsibilities as an interpreter and a carer are often mixed and blurry.
Therefore, their information needs are often seen as secondary to the patient or neglected. The primary carer’s information needs are currently not yet well understood.

This paper reports finding from a case study which examines an on-line diary of a husband-carer who provided support and care for his wife, who at the time of care was a lung cancer patient. The case study examines an ongoing learning process that the husband went through, identifies information needs by the carer and cultural factors which played an important role in the husband’s interpretation of information, decision making and provision of care. The finding extends a current model of the user’s information needs in the literature and suggests implications for further research into developing health information systems to meet information needs by the family carer.

Conceptualizing user satisfaction in the ubiquitous computing era

In this research-in-progress paper we argue that technology in the ubiquitous computing era offers experiences to users that extend well beyond the functional, practical applications offered in the world of work. In this era a realm of engagement is opening up to the individual that transcends the utilitarian, to encompass hedonic and social existence. Our central argument, therefore, is that user satisfaction is a notion which must extend to encompass rich, holistic human experience involving complex and fleeting interactions, driven by highly personal circumstances. We argue that the expectations, requirements and value perceptions of individuals in this dynamic context may only be anticipated and understood if situational factors (such as location, time, context, history-of-use) and quality of life factors (such as life stage, mobility, health, income, background, education) are taken into account. We identify the fundamental differences in key characteristics of user satisfaction between the traditional and ubiquitous computing environments and provide details about our own research approach, in which we are exploring ubiquitous content provision from the perspective of content providers.

Contextual influences on user satisfaction with mobile computing : findings from two healthcare organizations

Mobile information technologies (IT) are transforming individual work practices and organizations. These devices are extending not only the boundaries of the ‘office’ in space and time, but also the social context within which use occurs. In this paper, we investigate how extra-organizational influences can impact user satisfaction with mobile systems. The findings from our longitudinal study highlight the interrelatedness of different use contexts and their importance in perceptions of user satisfaction. The data indicate that varying social contexts of individual use (individual as employee, as professional, as private user, and as member of society) result in different social influences that affect the individual’s perceptions of user satisfaction with the mobile technology. While existing theories explain user satisfaction with IT within the organizational context, our findings suggest that future studies of mobile IT in organizations should accommodate such extra-organizational contextual influences.

A context-sensitive device to help people with autism cope with anxiety

We describe a smartphone application that helps people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cope with anxiety attacks. Our prototype provides a one-touch interface for indicating a panic level. The device's response-to instruct, soothe, and/or contact carers-is sensitive to the user's context, consisting of time, location, ambient noise, and nearby friends. Formative evaluation unearths a critical challenge to building assistive technologies for ASD sufferers: can regimented interfaces foster flexible behaviour? Our observations suggest that a delicate balance of design goals is required for a viable assistive technology.

Between context-aware media capture and multimedia content analysis - where do we find the promised land?

Various issues related to the multimedia information retrieval and media access are discussed. The feasible solutions for automatic signal-based analysis of media content are analyzed. The extent of user involvement in the content creation process is emphasized. The applications driving the creation and usage of context and metadata are also elaborated.

Dynamic shot suggestion filtering for home video based on user performance

This paper presents novel additions to our existing amateur media creation framework. The framework provides at-capture guidance to enable the home movie maker to realize their aesthetic and narrative goals and automation of post-production editing. A common problem with the amateur filming context is its contingent nature, which often results in the failure to gain footage vital to the user's goals, even with at-capture software embedding. Accordingly, we have modelled minimizing the difference between target and captured footage at a given time during filming as a probability distribution divergence problem. We apply two policies of feedback to the user on their performance, passive communication via a suggestion desirability measure, and active filtering of undesirable suggestions. We demonstrate the framework using each policy with a simulation of various user and filming situations with promising results.