Context-aware messaging: how personal, spatial and temporal constraints affect text-based communication

There are academic and commercial drivers for contextawareness to play a prominent role in the future of mobile services. Implementing a complete model of context remains an unsolved problem, however, some contextual elements such as person, time and place are relatively easy to identify. We develop a simple context model incorporating personal, temporal and spatial dimensions and apply it to a context-aware text messaging service. We report a field study of the service, investigating how applying these fundamental contextual constraints to messages can affect the nature of communication between participants. The results suggest that although contextual constraints are not appropriate for all types of message content, they increase opportunities for situated chat in public spaces, improve group awareness between peers and facilitate conversations between people, some of whom would not otherwise communicate with each other. Author Keywords Mobile messaging, SMS, context-aware, location...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: MUM
• Authors: Simon Jones, Eamonn O'Neill
• Keywords: Contextual Constraints, Contextual Elements, Fundamental Contextual Constraints, Multimedia, MUM 2009