Suresh Chande

Developing Workflow Engine for Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are today capable to run and maintain long running interaction and communication between people and external systems over cell and local proximity networks. In this paper, we will describe a mobile workflow system which provides a platform for deploying and managing process oriented applications and services in mobile devices. We will discuss the architecture and the implementation aspects of our prototype. We will discuss the value of this system to the users in managing and partly automating their regular activities in both personal and professional life. In addition, we will argue the use of standards and the advantages of integrating two open standards on web forms and web services in order to execute the mobile workflows.

Mobile visual interaction: enhancing local communication and collaboration with visual interactions

User interaction with applications and data is traditionally based on Menu driven, mouse or pen based user interfaces. As increasing number of mobile devices are equipped with cameras, mobile devices can be a key tool for local and remote visual interaction and communications. In this paper we discuss our Mobile Visual Interaction system that enables pointing with mobile camera devices on larger displays, and key findings in using mobile cameras for human computer interaction. The mobile pointing software can identify and interpret camera-detectable data elements inserted on data surfaces such as computer displays or projected screens. The user can interact with this system by pointing the mobile camera device to the surface and performing gestures. In this article we share the key challenges and key results found during developing the system.

SMEO: a platform for smart classrooms with enhanced information access and operations automation

This paper explores the area of creating smart spaces using mobile Internet devices to develop intelligent classrooms. We propose a suite of applications that leverage the recent progress made in the domains of mobile computers and information access, resulting in a richer classroom experience where knowledge is dispensed with greater efficiency while also making it possible to access it efficiently from the Internet as well as peers. We attempt to achieve this by introducing novel means of classroom teaching and management and an intelligent information access system while harnessing the computational capabilities of mobile Internet devices. Though the current work is still in progress, this paper elaborates on our attempts in reducing the gap between technological progress in various domains and the existing pedagogy.

ActiveForms: A Runtime for Mobile Application Forms

ActiveForms is a mobile centric runtime environment which provides users with a rich and unified experience for interacting over different communication channels. It provides mobile forms based user interface for interacting with the underlying mobile applications and services. ActiveForms provides a common runtime environment which helps to compose underlying applications and services along with different communication channels, such as HTTP, MMS, SMS or Bluetooth, into a manageable process oriented application. ActiveForms is a research prototype developed for smart phone environments. It utilizes standards based technologies for user interface such as XHTML and mobile Forms and for business logic it is based on Web services business process execution language (WS-BPEL). In this paper we will emphasize the layered architecture of ActiveForms, discuss the separation of user interface from integration logic that composes the underlying applications and services into a process oriented system. We will also discuss our experiences and learning.

Active notes: context-sensitive notes for mobile devices

Modern knowledge workers utilize digital computing platforms to create and consume digital media as part of their daily routines, using tools such as: Email, Messaging (SMS, IM), Audio podcasts, imaging, etc. As mobility is central in nature for mobile workers, the mobile computing platforms such as smart phones play an important role to consume and capture information into digital media. There are several available technology enablers in current mobile devices which help creation of Text, Audio, Video, Images and PIM application data, such as contacts, calendar events etc. These enablers are typically independent set of applications to help utilize different media types in different applications such as note taking tools. In this research we developed a research prototype of an application that helps user to make notes with a unified interface to create and maintain multimedia notes. We investigated particularly the act of note taking by mobile workers and the different usage patterns of notes in work environment covering both during and after they have been created. We studied different sets of users for their note taking practices. On identifying the key challenges posed by user interactions and the gaps posed in current solutions we devised and developed the Active Notes prototype. Active Notes an interactive and dynamic behavior provides to user created notes, responding to specific contextual events that occur in user communications. We will discuss our research approaches on how we identified the required features in our research prototype of Active Notes. We will elaborate the basis which supports the need for the rich functionality developed along with system level details on how we implemented this. We will discuss some of the features with the help of few application screen shorts to depict the effect of the features.

Mobile form-editor: a push based group communication tool

Electronic Forms are simple and light weight application framework based on structured information containing user interface (UI) with presentable information along with input fields used to collect data from the users. In addition to the UI Electronic forms also contains logic on what and how this user provided information is delivered back to the servers. In this paper we will discuss the use of Forms in mobile devices. In our implementation a user can create task specific mobileForms, distribute the forms to the concerned users and receive a processed Form response back onto the mobile devices, in a mobile centric manner. In this paper we will give the motivation and the approach we used to device this mobile centric Forms Editor. We will also discuss here details of the system which can ease the use of mobileForms in mobile device by particularly providing a rich user interface for human-human communications.

Remote monitoring and discrete data capture of joint pain and other parameters via the NokiaN900 device: Enhancing patient/physician interaction

The new generation cellular phones have multi-functional capabilities such as imaging, video, audio recording and messaging in addition to providing internet access. In this paper we present an innovative application in the field of remote health monitoring using N900 Nokia tablet, which will serve as a communicating device between the patient and healthcare providers like doctors and nurses. Patients with arthritis require regular objective monitoring of their affected joints by healthcare providers requiring that patients report their subjective pain levels to their physicians. The application has a patients module allowing the patient to select their pain level on a sliding scale from a graphical representation of various human joints and send this as an SMS to the doctor. The healthcare providers can review the pain level, save it to a database and make an informed decision about possible recommendations based on the data received via SMS. The doctors module allows the doctor to capture all the attributes of an affected joint discretely using the graphical representation of the joints and associated dialog boxes. The complete Graphical User Interface (GUI) development and data base design are discussed and test cases are presented. We plan to evaluate the application in a real healthcare environment for usability, its role in improving patient satisfaction and health outcomes.

ActivePlace, a Unified Collaboration Environment

As Workplaces are being equipped with communication-oriented software more and more people are faced with the need to handle with multiple communication contexts in environments with ever increasing multi-tasking nature. The increased complexity of managing communication in different contexts is becoming more demanding than ever before. This paper presents a unified collaborative system named ActivePlace, which enables context-awareness in communication and collaboration. In this paper we discuss the new design we applied compared to the traditional online room-based workplace systems, such as use of context-aware extended presence and the concept of activity awareness for places. The ActivePlace provides an infrastructure for communication and collaboration in a context-sensitive basis.