Using context information to enhance mobile communications: Licenciate thesis

Context-awareness means knowledge of the user’s physical and social surroundings, which enables the creation of richer applications. In my research I concentrate on different areas of context-awareness on the end user’s point of view based on a literature study. I especially concentrate on context-aware communication. I discuss the possible uses of context information in practical context-aware communication applications and the way context information can be created by the users. I also discuss the means users have for obtaining context information of other parties and getting informed when their contexts change, as well as what privacy concerns arise from context-aware communication. Related research projects are presented and evaluated against the literature study. The findings of the literature study are also inspected against the 35 000 ideas for new mobile services that the idea movement of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland collected in spring 2006. In addition to this, the ideas are also evaluated with users using a web-based questionnaire. Also, an application framework for mobile context-based messaging is developed. The questionnaire results indicate user preferences and provide many practical examples of utilizing the context-aware communication scenarios. Furthermore, the results are summarised to provide practical guidelines for the creation of context-aware communication applications. The application framework raises many questions on what should be taken into account when developing mobile context-aware communication applications.