1. 2008. 7 Intelligent Database Systems Lab. Seungseok Kang
Is Context-Aware Computing Taking Control Away From the User? Three Levels of Interactivity Examined
Intelligent Database Systems Lab.
Seungseok Kang .

2. 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

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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