A multi-modular approach for design and evaluation of context information interactive systems

In the pervasive environment, the context, the data/information processing system and the human being comprise an information chain, along which the information from the context is conducted to the user in a comprehensive way. However, current context-aware systems and methodologies are more concerned about the processing systems without sufficient consideration about the relationships between all three parties on the chain, causing a lack of comprehensiveness. Therefore, a high level design and evaluation approach is proposed in this paper targeted towards providing an abstract design guideline for context-aware systems development and an evaluation method assessing eight selected parameters related to all three parties on the information chain and their relationships. Three typical modular systems are demonstrated, which present more intuitive and comprehensive representation by following the proposed design guideline. These three systems are also evaluated with an overall consideration of the whole information lifecycle, using the proposed method.