2008. 7 Intelligent Database Systems Lab. Seungseok Kang Is Context-Aware Computing Taking Control Away From the User? Three Levels of Interactivity Examined 2008. 7 Intelligent Database Systems Lab. Seungseok Kang .

Introduction Context-aware computing promises a smooth interaction between humans and technology Few studies of how users perceive context-aware interaction have been performed Definition of context-aware computing ‘an application’s ability to detect and react to environment variables’ Three levels of interactivity for context-aware applications Personalization Passive context-awareness Active context-awareness Personalization would be preferred and would be more accepted than both passive and active context-awareness

Three Levels of Interactivity Personalization Common feature of computing applications Increased level of tailoring in software The majority of users use the default setting of change a small subset of the possible features Active and Passive Context-awareness Using Chen and Kotz’s definition of context-awareness Active Context-awareness Changing the content autonomously on the basis of measured sensor data Ex) Mobile phone that changes its time autonomously by new time zone Passive Context-awareness Presenting the updated context to the user Let the user specify how the application should change Ex) mobile phone prompts the user with information about the time zone change

Case Study Experimental case study Comparing users’ responses towards applications The three levels of services presented to participants

Case Study (cont.) Research method Participants The participants ‘imagine’ they have new applications available on their mobile phone 6 different services (applications) were proposed Participants 23 participants with mobile phone Age range from 19 to 35 (avg 23.7) who use mobile phone at lease three times a day

Perception of Control Their hypothesis Results “people felt less in control when using context-aware services, than when personalizing application” Results The more autonomous the services is, the less users felt in control Most of the participants feel they have control of their mobile phone with their currently available personalization-based applications Several of them worried about this control when they were introduced to context-aware features

Preference for Active and Passive Context-Awareness Participants preferred active context-awareness and passive context-awareness over personalization Experimental Results Higher level of interaction resulted in higher level of preference Preference for interaction level did not vary across individuals but varied across services Active context-awareness approach was preferred generally

Discussion and Conclusion Participants felt they lad less control in the context-aware groups Still prefer the context-aware approaches User might have less control using the more autonomous interactivity approaches Most of the users still prefer active and passive context-aware features over personalization Context-aware application should be developed with caution Incurred cost due to loss of control can result in users turning off a service Users are willing to accept a large degree of autonomy from application As long as the application’s usefulness is greater than the const of limited control