Context: definition and specification

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Agenda Introduction Work method Context in literature  Definitions  Specifications Where are we?  Definition  Specification Conclusion

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Introduction Context = con – text  Comes from literature General meaning  Facts or circumstances surrounding situation or event In computer science  No consensus  Case based  Poses new challenges

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Work methodology Workgroup Understanding of context in literature Decisions about context based on  literature  Understanding of own needs  Discussion with partners Preliminary validation  Scenarios with use cases and behaviour  Sample specifications Validation  Work packages in first two years  Review after two years

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Literature: definitions Different definitions Main properties of information in context (HCI) :  Important parts who, where, what [Schilit94] physical environment and software [Calvary 2002]  Relevant to interaction [Dey 2001]  About present and past [Coutaz 2002] Other properties  Distributed sources  Automated and human input  Ambiguous

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Literature: definitions Other definition [Van Kranenburg 2003]  User context person's environment, physiological and mental context, task, social, spaciotemporal domain, preferences  Service/Application context available and used applications, subscribed services  Session context which service, contacts, kind of data, bandwidth  Access Network Context properties of available networks  Terminal Context display size, memory communication interfaces  Service Platform Context subscriber info: access rights, privacy, location,...

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Literature: specification Languages  SGML [Brown 1995]  XML [Winograd 2001]  Text [Winograd 2001]  XML [Hong 2001]  OWL [Chen 2003]  RDF [Korpipää 2003]  XML [Van Kranenburg 2003] What?  Notes [Brown 1995]  Log [Winograd 2001]  Events [Winograd 2001]  Configuration [Hong 2001]  Ontology [Chen 2003]  Log [Korpipää 2003]  Location [Van Kranenburg 2003]

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Our working definition Context is any information held on a per-platform basis that is relevant for the interaction of a subject (person or service) with the platform and tells something about: The platform The user The environment The services

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Preliminary context The platform  technical specification (CPU, RAM, I/O,...)  runtime environment (OS, VM,...) The user (human)  personal information (privacy!)  global preferences (as opposed to per-service) Environment  physical information ... Services  what the platform provides to third parties

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Specification Per platform  Single specification  Local and Compact  Delegates to Other (existing) specifications Services Language  Standard notation  In evaluation: RDF

Leuven, 21 november 2003 Conclusion Context definition and specification  Work in progress  Steered by scenarios  Taking into account literature and standards Validation  Review  Other work packages Reiteration  After 2 years based on gained experience Work packages Feedback