Thinking About Context: Design Practices for Information Architecture with Context-Aware Systems

Abstract

The ubiquity of low-cost, sensor-rich, mobile computing devices has meant that designing context-aware systems is now a common concern in Information Architecture. Because of how prevalent context-aware systems have become, the way in which practitioners design context-aware systems is of great importance. While design frameworks and models have been proposed for context-aware computing systems, there has not yet been research that focuses on how designers' views of context influence Information Architecture practices. To address this, we present an empirical analysis of 11 in-depth interviews with designers of a variety of context-aware systems. Our analysis of these interviews, along with a review of the artifacts produced during the design of these systems, uses the theoretical lens of professional vision to illuminate how designers view, use, and account for context in the design process. Our analysis of the artifacts and interviews reveals that designers' perspectives on context adapted as they addressed the most salient and timely constraints. This results in the designer shifting between representational and interactional views of context rather than having one fixed perspective. This finding suggests that the methods of information architects for context-aware systems need to accommodate shifting perspective on context. We present details of this activity to contribute insight into the practice of information architecture for context-aware systems.

Le support applicatif à la notion de contexte : revue de la littérature en ingénierie de contexte

“…Among those that had not yet participated, about 63.6% were planning (or would have liked) to participate in such kind of project. Among those with previous experience, mobile and Web applications appeared to be the most commonly concerned, counting for respectively about 66.67% and 42.85% of those students, followed by location-aware applications and smart home applications (concerning each 28,57%) 3 . Independently of their previous experience, almost all students declared to know platforms commonly used for context-aware applications: 100% declared to know RaspberryPi and Android Phone, 86% for iPhone, 83% and 81% for iPad and iPad Pro, 81% for Android tablets and 48.83% for Arduino.…”

“…Such a dynamic and constrained execution environment has a significant impact on the software architecture and development, notably in terms of modularity, integration, interoperability and increasing number of non-functional constraints (e.g., robustness, scalability). Under these conditions, traditional software qualities, such as flexibility, dynamicity, modularity and extensibility, become difficult to satisfy, notably with ad-hoc development processes, which are still frequently adopted when developing context-aware applications, as observed in [2] [3].…”

“…Indeed, not all sensors offer the necessary information or metrics for quality indicators, and often software designers have to consider other means to calculate or estimate such indicators. For instance, considering temperature sensors like those mentioned by HomeAutomation.org 3 , these sensors may easily be influenced by external factors (e.g. exposition to sunlight or to heating/cold source), which may lead to significant errors in acquired data.…”

Designing across map use contexts: a research agenda

“…(Abowd et al, 1999, p. 305) Context is a dynamic and interactive construct, at once predictable and unpredictable, constituted of many static and dynamic factors (e.g. virtual and physical locations, time, social interactions, activities, people, objects) (Chen & Atwood, 2007;Greenberg, 2001;Reichenbacher, 2003), and the importance of particular contextual factors is highly variable according to the goals, abilities, and affective states of the involved individuals and groups (Abowd & Mynatt, 2000;Bauer, Newman, & Kientz, 2014). These factors are also highly interdependent and overlapping, and only when combined can they begin to capture what we describe as 'context'.…”