Tye Lawrence Rattenbury and John F. Canny

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2008-163

December 17, 2008

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2008/EECS-2008-163.pdf

The notions of activity and context serve as unifying threads in this dissertation. As socio-cultural phenomena, both activity and context refer to complex and dynamic aspects of human existence. Prior context-aware computing (CAC) applications have failed to address this complexity and dynamism. We overcome these failures by defining activity and context relationally -- as co-dependent and mutually producing phenomena. Our definitions explicitly highlight the evolving impact that activity has on context and that context has on activity. We then translate our definitions into a novel computational model. This model differs from prior work in its ability to automatically detect and evolve representations of activities and contexts. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our computational model by evaluating a prototype CAC application. This application is driven by, and enables interaction with, automatically generated representations of the user's activities and contexts.

Advisors: John F. Canny

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BibTeX citation:

@phdthesis{Rattenbury:EECS-2008-163,
    Author= {Rattenbury, Tye Lawrence and Canny, John F.},
    Title= {An Activity Based Approach to Context-Aware Computing},
    School= {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year= {2008},
    Month= {Dec},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2008/EECS-2008-163.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2008-163},
    Abstract= {The notions of activity and context serve as unifying threads in this dissertation. As socio-cultural phenomena, both activity and context refer to complex and dynamic aspects of human existence. Prior context-aware computing (CAC) applications have failed to address this complexity and dynamism. We overcome these failures by defining activity and context relationally -- as co-dependent and mutually producing phenomena. Our definitions explicitly highlight the evolving impact that activity has on context and that context has on activity. We then translate our definitions into a novel computational model. This model differs from prior work in its ability to automatically detect and evolve representations of activities and contexts. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our computational model by evaluating a prototype CAC application. This application is driven by, and enables interaction with, automatically generated representations of the user's activities and contexts.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Thesis
%A Rattenbury, Tye Lawrence 
%A Canny, John F. 
%T An Activity Based Approach to Context-Aware Computing
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2008
%8 December 17
%@ UCB/EECS-2008-163
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2008/EECS-2008-163.html
%F Rattenbury:EECS-2008-163