Too Much Information – Context-Aware Applications

ChelleChelle writes with a link to IBM research on the limits to and lessons learned from two context-aware computing projects: "As the researchers Moran and Dourish put it, 'Context awareness is fine in theory. The research issue is figuring out how to get it to work in practice.' The article lays out two attempts by IBM to do just this. Grapevine and Rendezvous are services offered to IBM employees as a means of looking into the promise and perils of context-aware computing. From these two experimental services the authors have drawn several valuable lessons." From the article: "What computer scientists commonly call context often has more to do with technology than with work situations, people, or frames of mind."

Comments

printer version - all one page

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&p a=printer_friendly&pid=410&page=1

Re:printer version - all one page

[neonprimetime]

Sorry, doesn't work. It redirects to the main page.

Re:No!

[Irish_Samurai]

This is not exactly true.

I have noticed that users generally fall into two distinct groups, those who understand the underlying concepts and those who don't. This difference seems to dictate how a user will actually respond to a change in interface.

Someone who doesn't understand the underlying concepts completes computer related tasks by mimicking a previous action that brought about the desired results. They couldn't answer a single question regarding what they were actually doing or how it worked. These are the type of people who cannot transition between OSes or even APP versions very well. This group is exemplary of your statement.

The second group has a firm grasp on the concepts they are working with. They can transition between OSes and APP versions much quicker because they understand WHAT it is they want to do, they don't rely on the HOW.

I do agree that if you had a constantly changing interface that it would be difficult to become an efficient operator. Yet I can also see how some people might function better with something like this. There is the opportunity to strike a nice balance between constantly changing interfaces and completely static ones. Your web browser is a perfect example of this. High level functions that have triggers in a static layout, but content navigation that changes drastically from site to site. While there are some best practices concerning site navigation, they are still extremely dynamic. Just look at how frequently the terminology changes from site to site concerning the navigation.