Personalized service and network adaptation for smart devices

The availability of smart devices with integrated GSM/GPRS/WiFi and the rollout of public hotspots allow users to be always online at reasonable costs. Personalised and context aware applications will become available in the forthcoming years due to the wide availability of smart devices and the interest of telecom operators and service providers to provide personalised services. For the user to access his preferred network and services in a particular context we need to have some mechanisms in place and an infrastructure that reacts autonomously on behalf of the user. This paper proposes a solution based on context-aware user profiles and their associated user preferences. It describes a smart device centered solution and a prototype has been built for Microsoft Windows Mobile™ Pocket PCs to validate the ideas. © 2005 IEEE

Correlation Analysis Method of Customisation and Semi-Personalisation in Mobility as a Service

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has been proposed as a user-centric, data-driven and personalised ser-vice. However, full personalisation is not available yet. Customisation settings are developed in mobile appli-cations, and several semi-personalised functionalities are also involved. The quantitative analysis of relation between these two could be the reference for further de-velopment tendency of interface functions in mobile ap-plications. Thus, the research objective is identified as: the quantitative correlation analysis between semi-per-sonalisation functionalities and customisation settings. Accordingly, the multi-criteria qualitative analysis method is applied to identify the assessment aspects regarding mobile applications. The scoring method is also introduced. Then the correlation quantitative anal-ysis method is applied to calculate the correlation coef-ficient. We have assessed 25 MaaS applications regard-ing determined aspects. The correlation coefficients for each application together with the overall coefficient are calculated, the assessment results are summarised, and the correlation tendency is interpreted. According to assessment results, the correlation between custom-isation settings and semi-personalisation is not strong at current stage. Selected MaaS mobile applications are customisation setting oriented applications. Fewer manual selections are expected in further personalised services. Our results facilitate development of further personalised functions in MaaS mobile applications

A mobile-programmable smart mirror for ambient IoT environments

© 2017 IEEE. The purpose of this paper is to present a smart interactive mirror interface. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a futuristic mirror that offers simplified and customisable services to the home environment. On a par with the recent advances in the Internet of Things standards and applications, the mirror is designed to enable residents to control the household smart appliances and access personalised services; ensuring convenience in accessing these services with the slightest possible user intervention. The multipurpose user-friendly functionalities of the proposed mirror interface provide users with the versatility needed for better management and integration of daily tasks. A service oriented approach is adopted in the architecture of the proposed system. It consists mainly of two mobile applications devoted to the customisation of user profiles, which are displayed on the smart mirror interface once successfully paired. Moreover, in the proposed system, emphasis is particularly given to the user profile personalisation, as well as planned system interactivity and adaptability. Hence, the proposed system is set apart from others for its ease of use as well as its provision of various customised information services for user profile generation

Model-driven Personalisation of Human-Computer Interaction across Ubiquitous Computing Applications

Personalisation is essential to Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), which focuses on a human-centred paradigm aiming to provide interaction with adaptive content, services, and interfaces towards each one of its users, according to the context of the applications’ scenarios. However, the provision of that appropriated personalised interaction is a true challenge due to different reasons, such as the user interests, heterogeneous environments and devices, dynamic user behaviour and data capture. This dissertation focuses on a model-driven personalisation solution that has the main goal of facili-tating the implementation of a personalised human-computer interaction across different Ubicomp scenarios and applications. The research reported here investigates how a generic and interoperable model for personalisation can be used, shared and processed by different applications, among diverse devices, and across different scenarios, studying how it can enrich human-computer interaction. The research started by the definition of a consistent user model with the integration of context to end in a pervasive model for the definition of personalisations across different applications. Besides the model proposal, the other key contributions within the solution are the modelling frame-work, which encapsulates the model and integrates the user profiling module, and a cloud-based platform to pervasively support developers in the implementation of personalisation across different applications and scenarios. This platform provides tools to put end users in control of their data and to support developers through web services based operations implemented on top of a personalisa-tion API, which can also be used independently of the platform for testing purposes, for instance. Several Ubicomp applications prototypes were designed and used to evaluate, at different phases, both the solution as a whole and each one of its components. Some were specially created with the goal of evaluating specific research questions of this work. Others were being developed with a pur-pose other than for personalisation evaluation, but they ended up as personalised prototypes to better address their initial goals. The process of applying the personalisation model to the design of the latter should also work as a proof of concept on the developer side. On the one hand, developers have been probed with the implementation of personalised applications using the proposed solution, or a part of it, to assess how it works and can help them. The usage of our solution by developers was also important to assess how the model and the platform respond to the developers’ needs. On the other hand, some prototypes that implement our model-driven per-sonalisation solution have been selected for end user evaluation. Usually, user testing was conducted at two different stages of the development, using: (1) a non-personalised version; (2) the final per-sonalised version. This procedure allowed us to assess if personalisation improved the human-com-puter interaction. The first stage was also important to know who were the end users and gather interaction data to come up with personalisation proposals for each prototype. Globally, the results of both developers and end users tests were very positive. Finally, this dissertation proposes further work, which is already ongoing, related to the study of a methodology to the implementation and evaluation of personalised applications, supported by the development of three mobile health applications for rehabilitation

AmbieSense: a system and reference architecture for personalised and context-sensitive information services for mobile users

The purpose of AmbieSense is to provide personalised, context-sensitive information to the mobile user. It is about augmenting digital information to physical objects, rooms, and areas. The aim is to provide relevant information to the right user and situation. Digital content is distributed from the surroundings and onto your mobile phone. An ambient information environment is provided by a combination of context tag technology, a software platform to manage and deliver the information, and personal computing devices to which the information is served. This paper describes how the AmbieSense reference architecture has been defined and used in order to deliver information to the mobile citizen at the right time, place and situation. Information is provided via specialist content providers. The application area addresses the information needs of travellers and tourists

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

Customer empowerment in tourism through Consumer Centric Marketing (CCM)

We explain Consumer Centric Marketing (CCM) and adopt this new technique to travel context. Benefits and disadvantages of the CCM are outlined together with warnings of typical caveats Value: CCM will be expected as the norm in the travel industry by customers of the future, yet it is only the innovators who gain real tangible benefits from this development. We outline current and future opportunities to truly place your customer at the centre and provide the organisation with some real savings/gains through the use of ICT Practical Implications: We offer tangible examples for travel industry on how to utilise this new technology. The technology is already available and the ICT companies are keen to establish ways how consumers can utilise it, i.e. by providing ‘content’ for these ICT products the travel industry can fully gain from these developments and also enhance consumers’ gains from it. This can result in more satisfied customers for the travel (as well as ICT) companies thus truly adopting the basic philosophy of marketin

Investigation into a best practice model for providing an integrated user experience with mobile cloud applications

Mobile Cloud Computing promises to overcome the physical limitations of mobile devices by executing demanding mobile applications on cloud infrastructure. In practice, implementing this paradigm is difficult; network disconnection often occurs, bandwidth may be limited, and a large power draw is required from the battery, resulting in a poor user experience. This thesis presents a mobile cloud middleware solution, Context Aware Mobile Cloud Services (CAMCS), which provides cloudbased services to mobile devices, in a disconnected fashion. An integrated user experience is delivered by designing for anticipated network disconnection, and low data transfer requirements. CAMCS achieves this by means of the Cloud Personal Assistant (CPA); each user of CAMCS is assigned their own CPA, which can complete user-assigned tasks, received as descriptions from the mobile device, by using existing cloud services. Service execution is personalised to the user's situation with contextual data, and task execution results are stored with the CPA until the user can connect with his/her mobile device to obtain the results. Requirements for an integrated user experience are outlined, along with the design and implementation of CAMCS. The operation of CAMCS and CPAs with cloud-based services is presented, specifically in terms of service description, discovery, and task execution. The use of contextual awareness to personalise service discovery and service consumption to the user's situation is also presented. Resource management by CAMCS is also studied, and compared with existing solutions. Additional application models that can be provided by CAMCS are also presented. Evaluation is performed with CAMCS deployed on the Amazon EC2 cloud. The resource usage of the CAMCS Client, running on Android-based mobile devices, is also evaluated. A user study with volunteers using CAMCS on their own mobile devices is also presented. Results show that CAMCS meets the requirements outlined for an integrated user experience