Comparing two approaches to context: realism and constructivism

ABSTRACT

During the last few years, there have been debates over what is context and how computers should act upon it. Two disparate camps of thought can be recognized. First, Realism, having its roots in natural sciences, believes that contexts exist out there and that, if properly instrumented and programmed, computers can correctly recognize and adapt to them. Second, Constructivism, having its roots in human and social sciences, believes that contexts are human creations, mental and social, and that computers ought to provide resources for managing them. We reveal some fundamental differences between the two in three different application domains. We show that despite the deep-going controversies, both camps benefit from considering the alternative approach and a middle ground can be found.

REFERENCES

• 1: Wendy S. Ark , D. Christopher Dryer , Davia J. Lu, The Emotion Mouse, Proceedings of HCI International (the 8th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction) on Human-Computer Interaction: Ergonomics and User Interfaces-Volume I, p.818-823, August 22-26, 1999
• 2: Höök, K. User-centred design and evaluation of affective interfaces. In Pelachaud, C. and Ruttkay, Z. (Eds.), Evaluating ECAs, Kluwer (forthcoming).
• 3: P. J. Brown , G. J. F. Jones, Context-aware Retrieval: Exploring a New Environment for Information Retrieval and Information Filtering, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.5 n.4, p.253-263, December 2001 [doi>10.1007/s007790170004 ]
• 4: van Dantzich, M., Robbins, D., Horvitz, E. & Czerwinski, M. Scope: Providing awareness of multiple notifications at a glance. Proc Advanced Visual Interfaces 2002, Trento, Italy, 2002.
• 5: Dey, A. K. and Abowd, G. D. Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. Technical report GIT-GVU-99-22, 1999, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.
• 6: Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001
• 7: Paul Dourish, What we talk about when we talk about context, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.8 n.1, p.19-30, February 2004 [doi>10.1007/s00779-003-0253-8]
• 8: Fagerberg, P., Ståhl, A., and Höök, K. Designing gestures for affective input: an analysis of shape, effort, and valence. Proc. MUM 2003, Norrköping, Sweden.
• 9: James Fogarty , Scott E. Hudson , Jennifer Lai, Examining the robustness of sensor-based statistical models of human interruptibility, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.207-214, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985719]
• 10: Batya Friedman , Peter H. Kahn, Jr., New directions: a value-sensitive design approach to augmented reality, Proceedings of DARE 2000 on Designing augmented reality environments, p.163-164, April 2000, Elsinore, Denmark [doi>10.1145/354666.354694]
• 11: Hacking, I. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press (1999).
• 12: Mehan, H, and Wood, H. The reality of ethnomethodology. New York, Wiley (1975).
• 13: Alan J. Munro , D. J. Sanger , D. R. Benyon, Personal and Social Navigation of Information Space, Springer-Verlag, London, 1999
• 14: Antti Oulasvirta , Sakari Tamminen , Virpi Roto , Jaana Kuorelahti, Interaction in 4-second bursts: the fragmented nature of attentional resources in mobile HCI, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1054972.1055101]
• 15: Antti Salovaara , Antti Oulasvirta, Six modes of proactive resource management: a user-centric typology for proactive behaviors, Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction, p.57-60, October 23-27, 2004, Tampere, Finland [doi>10.1145/1028014.1028022]
• 16: Risto Sarvas , Erick Herrarte , Anita Wilhelm , Marc Davis, Metadata creation system for mobile images, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, June 06-09, 2004, Boston, MA, USA [doi>10.1145/990064.990072]
• 17: Jocelyn Scheirer , Raul Fernandez , Rosalind W. Picard, Expression glasses: a wearable device for facial expression recognition, CHI '99 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [doi>10.1145/632716.632878]
• 18: Schmidt, A., Beigl, M. and Gellersen, H.-W. There is more to context than location. Computers & Graphics, 23 (6), 1998, 893--901.
• 19: Lucy A. Suchman, Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1987
• 20: Sakari Tamminen , Antti Oulasvirta , Kalle Toiskallio , Anu Kankainen, Understanding mobile contexts, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.8 n.2, p.135-143, May 2004 [doi>10.1007/s00779-004-0263-1]
• 21: David Tennenhouse, Proactive computing, Communications of the ACM, v.43 n.5, p.43-50, May 2000 [doi>10.1145/332833.332837]
• 22: Weiser, M. The Computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American, 265 (3), 1991, 66--75.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Keywords:
constructivism, context, context-awareneness, ethnomethodology, realism, social navigation, ubiquitous computing