Context Based Communities

Mario Pichler [email protected] +43 7236 3343 898 www.scch.at

Context-based Communities Communities in the Wild

Agenda

 Background, motivation  The need for community support

 Outdoor communities - communities in the wild  Challenges for outdoor community support

 Research approach, expected results  Summary, further work & open issues

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Original Motivation

 How to provide added value through mobile and ubiquitous applications?

 Scenarios of innovative applications  Field study: Linz Intl. Airport  Vision / goal

 Provision of information and services that offer real added value to mobile users, based on the user’s current situation

 “Contextual Services” … therefore … Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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… Context Areas “The value of a mobile … service relies fundamentally on the relations to its immediate Source: Paay, MHCI, 2003 surroundings …”

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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... The Need for: Community Support  Primary objective of scenarios

 Service environment / context area  Contextual services offered within context area  Individual service access  But:

 Number of community scenarios developed

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Racetrack Guide – Communities  Communities: „Fans of driver X“ „Fans of team Y“ „Persons interested in racing“

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Concert Guide – Communities  Community: „People waiting for the beginning of a rock concert“

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... The Need for: Community Support (contd.)  Why?

 Nr. of community scenarios developed  Growing demand for mobile social-software services (MoSoSos)

Source: Smith, IEEE Computer, 38(4), 2005

– A few companies are starting to exploit this demand

 Mobile technology used to meet social needs of mobile people – Predestined to stay in touch with others (SMS, instant messaging etc.) – Drawback: primarily, one-to-one communication

 Need for one-to-many to many-to-many communication Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Reasons for Community Applications1  Exchange and sharing of

   

Information, knowledge

Other digital artefacts (MP3 files, task lists etc.) Experiences (travel diaries, workout data etc.) Computational resources

 Awareness among group members  Finding (matchmaking) of like-minded people

 Coordination of rendezvous with others Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Reasons for Community Applications2  Group communication

 One-to-many, many-to-many  Providing help in various situations  Searching / distributing information

 Buyer / seller, bargain hunter services  Selective advertising  Augmentation of activities’ experiences  Support of social interactions Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Context-Based Community (CBC)  Communities being built of humans, who:

 Come together in physical proximity (e.g. race track, concert area)

 Reside in equal or similar situations (e.g. people waiting on train- or tram stations)

 Are carrying out similar activities or tasks (e.g. running, mountain biking, hiking)

 Do have the same interests (e.g. music style)

 More general:

 Communities of humans in the same context area Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Related Work

Source: Kindberg&Fox, IEEE Perv. Comp. 1 (1), 2002

Source: Cortese et al. , 2005

 Etc.

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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So far...

 ... Infrastructure-enhanced scenarios

 Number of projects dealing with this issue  Seems achievable Thus: want to move forward towards...

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Case Study Mobile Guides for Mountain Bikers ”Investigation in real mobile contexts”

Mountain Bikers: Adopters of Mobile Technologies

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Observations: Issues

 Communication among mobile devices  Devices are not able to communicate with each other  If so, interesting applications would be possible, e.g. – Spontaneous exchange of route descriptions among bikers

 Support of mobile ad-hoc communities  Download & sharing of tour descriptions via laptop or desktop PC

 Difficult to identify other community members while biking  Field study applicable for various communities  Mountain bikers, trekking bikers, racing bikers, runners, horse back riders, hikers, alpine skiers etc. Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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... Focus on Outdoor Communities  Ad-hoc communities

 “Mobilizing” communities from desktop into the real world -> into “the wild”

 Mostly without infrastructure support  Research question

 “How can members of outdoor communities be provided with community-specific services when carrying out their community activities?” Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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...Now: Outdoor Communities

 And many more … Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Issues, Challenges

 How to detect own context/situation?

 Idea: usage of (personal) mobile devices  Context detection  How to detect community membership?

 Which devices are used by which community?  Can mobile devices define community membership?

 Context matching  Overlapping communities (context areas) Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Mobile Devices for Different Activities

 Which devices are used by which community?  Can mobile devices define community membership? Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Methodology

 Identification of mobile people’s basic needs  Scenario development

 Field studies  Analysis of field studies and scenarios

 Concept development  Proof of concept  Survey on Related Work

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Expected Contributions

 Investigation and identification of outdoor communities as potential application domain

 Concepts for detecting context proximity

 Context detection  Context matching  Experiences about

 Suitability of developed concepts  Potential of MUA technologies for outdoor comm. Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Summary

 Original motivation: context areas and contextual services  Shift from infrastructure-enhanced scenarios towards ad-hoc scenarios for community support

 Support of outdoor communities or communities in the wild  Based on (field) study results  Challenges

 Context detection & matching as basis for community support

 Methodology, contributions

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Further Work: Schedule

 Detecting context proximity of several (mobile) people

 How to use sensor information provided by those devices for detecting context of user?

 Detection of matching or similar context of humans

 Goal: Context-based community applications  Beforehand: decision on open issues ...

Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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... Open Issues?

 Personal concern

 Base research on real-world problem! (requested at UbiComp summer school 2002)

 Focus on?

 1) Identification of – Application domains, user needs, suitable methods etc.

 2) ..1) + Concept for solving identified challenges – Outdoor communities + detection of context proximity

 3) Detection of context proximity Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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Thanks for your Attention, Questions, Remarks!  Contact information: Mario Pichler

Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH Hauptstrasse 99

A-4232 Hagenberg Tel. +43 7236 3343-898 Fax +43 7236 3343-888 [email protected] www.scch.at/people/mario.pichler Context'05, Doctoral Consortium, July 05, 2005, Paris, France

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