Nick S. Ryan

Using while moving: HCI issues in fieldwork environments

“Using while moving” is the basic ability fieldwork users require of a mobile computer system. These users come from a wide range of backgrounds but have in common an extremely mobile and dynamic workplace. We identify four specific characteristics of this class of users: dynamic user configuration, limited attention capacity, high-speed interaction, and context dependency. A prototype is then presented that was designed to assist fieldworkers in data collection tasks and to explore the HCI design issues involved. The prototype was used in an extensive field trial by a group of ecologists observing giraffe behavior in Kenya. Following this trial, improvements were made to the prototype interface which in turn was tested in a subsequent field trial with another group of ecologists. From this experience, we have formulated our resulting ideas about interface design for fieldworkers into two general principles: Minimal Attention User Interfaces (MAUIs) and context awareness. The MAUI seeks to minimize the attention, though not necessarily the number of interactions, required from the user in operating a device. Context awareness enables the mobile device to provide assistance based on a knowledge of its environment.

Issues in Developing Context-Aware Computing

Two differing context-aware projects are described in this paper as a basis for exploring and better understanding the nature of context and context-aware applications. The investigation reveals that although indeed a useful concept, better supporting infrastructure is required before it can become a feasible mainstream technology. In particular, we propose the concept of a context information service to address this need, and define the general characteristics that such a service should exhibit.

Developing Personal Technology for the Field

This paper is concerned with developing personal computing aids for the mobile fieldworker. A description of mobile computing and context-aware technology is given, suggesting how hand-held computing devices that are aware of various factors of their userís environment (such as location) could be helpful. In particular, the concept of a stick-e note is introduced as a general-purpose context-aware technology that we have developed. The needs of fieldworkers and the suitability of stick-e note technology to their tasks is addressed, and a number of areas where stick-e note technology could help are identified. The design of a prototypical sticke-e note system that attempts to meet these needs is introduced and an account given of an extensive trial of this prototype in assisting in a behavioural study of giraffe in Kenya.

Acoustic environment as an indicator of social and physical context

Acoustic environments provide many valuable cues for context-aware computing applications. From the acoustic environment we can infer the types of activity, communication modes and other actors involved in the activity. Environmental or background noise can be classified with a high degree of accuracy using recordings from microphones commonly found in PDAs and other consumer devices. We describe an acoustic environment recognition system incorporating an adaptive learning mechanism and its use in a noise tracker. We show how this information is exploited in a mobile context framework. To illustrate our approach we describe a context-aware multimodal weather forecasting service, which accepts spoken or written queries and presents forecast information in several forms, including email, voice and sign languages.

Exploiting Immunological Properties for Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The immune system exhibits properties such as learning, distributivity continual adaptation, context dependent response and memory during the lifetime of a host. This paper argues that such properties are essential for the creation of future context-aware and ubiquitous systems where the need for such properties is becoming increasingly clear. To that end, we present an immune inspired system, which draws heavily on the immune network metaphor to create a meta-stable context-aware memory system that could be delivered in small hand-held devices.