Using Context-awareness to Support Adaptive Multimodal Mobile Notification

Multimodal mobile notification can enable natural and implicit notification in a mobile context by adapting the output modality according to the user’s context. There are several existing models for adaptive mobile notification using context awareness. A comparison of two of these models identified several shortcomings. The IBM INS model was selected as the most appropriate model and extended to support context history and mode switching. This paper discusses the proposed model for adaptive multimodal mobile notification together with the development of a prototype, called Mercury, based on this model. The aim of this research was to determine the usefulness and accuracy of adaptive multimodal mobile notification using the user’s context to adapt the mode of notification. Mercury was evaluated using an extensive field study conducted over a period of two months. The results obtained show that the users found the adaptive mobile notification service to be useful and accurate, but that they had some concerns about the level of interruptions.