Ubiquitous computing is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include Internet, advanced middleware, operating system, mobile code, sensors, microprocessors, new I/O and user interfaces, computer networks, mobile protocols, location and positioning, and new materials.
Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the field of CSCW seeks to analyze and draw connections between currently understood human psychological and social behaviors and available collaborative tools, or groupware. Often the goal of CSCW is to help promote and utilize technology in a collaborative way, and help create new tools to succeed in that goal. These parallels allow CSCW research to inform future design patterns or assist in the development of entirely new tools.
Context awareness refers, in information and communication technologies, to a capability to take into account the situation of entities, which may be users or devices, but are not limited to those. Location is only the most obvious element of this situation. Narrowly defined for mobile devices, context awareness does thus generalize location awareness. Whereas location may determine how certain processes around a contributing device operate, context may be applied more flexibly with mobile users, especially with users of smart phones. Context awareness originated as a term from ubiquitous computing or as so-called pervasive computing which sought to deal with linking changes in the environment with computer systems, which are otherwise static. The term has also been applied to business theory in relation to contextual application design and business process management issues.
Paul Dourish is a computer scientist best known for his work and research at the intersection of computer science and social science. Born in Scotland, he holds the Steckler Endowed Chair of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he joined the faculty in 2000, and where he directs the Steckler Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the BCS, and is a two-time winner of the ACM CSCW "Lasting Impact" award, in 2016 and 2021.
Context-aware computing refers to a general class of mobile systems that can sense their physical environment, and adapt their behavior accordingly.
A pervasive game is one where the gaming experience is extended out in the real world, or where the fictive world in which the game takes place blends with the physical world. The "It's Alive" mobile games company described pervasive games as "games that surround you", while Montola, Stenros and Waern's book, Pervasive Games defines them as having "one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally, or socially." The concept of a "magic circle" draws from the work of Johan Huizinga, who describes the boundaries of play.
Gregory Dominic Abowd is a computer scientist best known for his work in ubiquitous computing, software engineering, and technologies for autism. He currently serves as the Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. Previously he was the J.Z. Liang Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he joined the faculty in 1994.
The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI).
The Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI) is a leading series of academic conferences in Human–computer interaction and is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. MobileHCI has been held annually since 1998 and has been an ACM SIGCHI sponsored conference since 2012 The conference is very competitive, with an acceptance rate of below 20% in 2017 from 25% in 2006 and 21.6% in 2009. MobileHCI 2011 was held in Stockholm, Sweden, and MobileHCI 2012 which was sponsored by SIGCHI held in San Francisco, USA.
Location awareness refers to devices that can determine their location. Navigational instruments provide location coordinates for vessels and vehicles. Surveying equipment identifies location with respect to a well-known location wireless communications device.
Susanne Boll is a Professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. and is a member of the board at the research institute OFFIS. She is a member of SIGMM and SIGCHI of the ACM as well as the German Informatics Society GI. She founded and directs the HCI Lab at the University of Oldenburg and OFFIS.
Nikil Dutt is a Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Irvine, United States. Professor Dutt's research interests are in embedded systems, electronic design automation, computer architecture, optimizing compilers, system specification techniques, distributed systems, and formal methods.
The Telecooperation Office (TECO) is a research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. The research group is in the Institute of Telematics, and is attached to the chair for Pervasive Computing Systems, currently held by Michael Beigl.
The Human Media Lab(HML) is a research laboratory in Human-Computer Interaction at Queen's University's School of Computing in Kingston, Ontario. Its goals are to advance user interface design by creating and empirically evaluating disruptive new user interface technologies, and educate graduate students in this process. The Human Media Lab was founded in 2000 by Prof. Roel Vertegaal and employs an average of 12 graduate students.
A transreality game, sometimes written as trans-reality game, describes a type of video game or a mode of gameplay that combines playing a game in a virtual environment with game-related, physical experiences in the real world and vice versa. In this approach a player evolves and moves seamlessly through various physical and virtual stages, brought together in one unified game space. Alongside the rising trend of gamification, the application of game mechanics to tasks that are not traditionally associated with play, a transreality approach to gaming incorporates mechanics that extend over time and space, effectively playing through a players day-to-day interactions.
Victoria Bellotti is a Senior CI researcher in the Member Experience Team at Netflix. Previously, she was a user experience manager for growth at Lyft and a research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center. She is known for her work in the area of personal information management and task management, but from 2010 to 2018 she began researching context-aware peer-to-peer transaction partner matching and motivations for using peer-to-peer marketplaces which led to her joining Lyft. Victoria also serves as an adjunct professor in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at University of California Santa Cruz, on the editorial board of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing and as an associate editor for the International Journal of HCI. She is a researcher in the Human–computer interaction community. In 2013 she was awarded membership of the ACM SIGCHI Academy for her contributions to the field and professional community of human computer interaction.
A sensing floor is a floor with embedded sensors. Depending on their construction, these floors are either monobloc . or modular. The first sensing floor prototypes were developed in the 1990s, mainly for human gait analysis. Such floors are usually used as a source of sensing information for an ambient intelligence. Depending on the type of sensors employed, sensing floors can measure load (pressure), proximity, as well as the magnetic field.
Gaetano Borriello (1958–2015) was an American computer scientist and researcher in ubiquitous computing. He is known for starting the Open Data Kit project and as the founding director of Intel Research Seattle. The Place Lab project he led at Intel Research using Wi-Fi to enhance location sensing is now the dominant approach in use by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others.
Joëlle Coutaz is a French computer scientist, specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI). Her career includes research in the fields of operating systems and HCI, as well as being a professor at the University of Grenoble. Coutaz is considered a pioneer in HCI in France, and in 2007, she was awarded membership to SIGCHI. She was also involved in organizing CHI conferences and was a member on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
Johanna Brewer is a developer, designer, ethnographer and professor at Smith College. Brewer was a co-founder and CEO of Frestyl. In 2014, they started work on a tracking toolkit for home automation systems with a special focus on user privacy. In 2016, they founded a research and design studio called Neta Snook, focusing on the creation of technology that works towards a diverse society. In spring 2019, they started as a research associate and postdoctoral researcher at MIT. Their research areas include ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction, social connectivity and how technology functions in society.
