An Architecture for Interactive Context-Aware Applications

The interactive behavior of context-aware applications depends on the physical and logical context in which the interaction occurs. The main difference between traditional HCI design and context-aware design is how we deal with context. In this article, we pick up on recent ubicomp community trends, drawing from sociology and focusing on interaction´s communicative aspects. So, starting from the premise that interaction is communication, we propose a new interaction model for context-aware applications. We then derive an architectural framework that developers can use to implement our interaction model. The main benefit of our architecture is that, by modeling context in the user interface, developers can represent the application´s inferences visually for users