Adaptation Design in Ubiquitous Computing

The concept of Ubiquitous Computing, also called Ubicomp for brevity, describes a new paradigm on the usage of computer based systems, which is – in comparison to the usage of conventional computers – characterized by an enhanced degree of user centering, thus enabling users to benefit from computer usage and support in as many situations as possible. The computer as an apparent tool thereby steps into the background while the actual needs and wishes of the current user step into the foreground. As usability plays the major role in Ubicomp, accomplishing user needs must be done automatically, i.e. without capturing a user’s attention. Despite many years of research, designing successful applications for Ubicomp is still a complex and error prone task. This is because most work only concentrates on technical implementation of context awareness as an enabling technology for realizing ubiquitous systems. But apparently, adapting to satisfy user needs in varying environments will also require an extension of traditional design methods and processes. We therefore propose a methodological approach to adaptation design. The proposed methodology explicitly handles the notion of context dependent system flexibility that is needed in many models and methods used for adaptive system design. This iterative approach enables system designers to invent systems that are context aware and change their behavior appropriately to a user’s intentions – independent from designing individual components or services. As a proof of concept this methodical approach was evaluated by means of two long-term case studies: within one case study an industrial hospital setting exposing certain self healing skills was developed while the other setting concerns a Context Aware Task Scheduler (Cats), which aims at assisting business users by optimally arranging their daily schedules. For that purpose, the Cats inter alia makes context depending decisions and adapts relevant system functionalities according to the current usage situation, e.g. by automatically shifting to silent notification when the user is currently attending a conference.