In Cityware, we explore the relationship between the spaces created by urban architecture and the interaction spaces created by artefacts such as digital devices. Our approach to the design of pervasive systems is underpinned by a conceptual spectrum describing degrees of publicness. This spectrum ranges from private through social to public. Orthogonal to this spectrum, we place three aspects of pervasive systems: the physical setting (architectural space), the technology being used (interaction space), and the information being accessed or exchanged (spheres). The result is a 3x3 matrix that may be used to map out existing technologies and systems and to inform the design of new pervasive systems.
Call management system
Interaction spaces may be auditory or visual. A scenario highlighting the issues around the relationship between public, social and private architectural space and interaction space is as follows: James is constantly in and out of meetings, frequently having to make the choice either to turn his mobile phone off and risk missing an important call or to leave it on and potentially annoy everyone else in the meeting. A context-aware call management system will mitigate this problem by adapting the output from an incoming phone call to the recipients current context, defined in terms of the publicness spectrum of her current architectural space and the publicness of the various auditory and visual interaction spaces that may currently be available to alert the recipient to the call. In addition, the recipient may choose to have callers informed of the recipients current situation in order that callers can consider whether to persist in attempting to communicate (for example, in an emergency) or adopt the most appropriate alternative strategy. We are implementing a call management system that offers these features, exploiting phone users address books, diaries and GPS coordinates.
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