The concept of context-awareness seeks to enhance human-computer interaction by providing the computing device with a knowledge of its environment (or context). In the explanation of mobility, reference was made to new types of software that exploit the nature of mobility through an understanding of location. This is context-aware software, i.e. software that is aware of its location context and uses this knowledge for some purpose. A good example of applying such context-awareness is in a guided-tour program that displays information appropriate to the part of the city where the user is currently standing.

Context-awareness is by no means restricted to location-based awareness. Any detectable attribute of the environment can be used as a context, e.g. temperature, presence of other people, time, heart rate, etc. The more contexts that can be collected, the more data there is that can be used to allow the device to act appropriately based on its environment. In general, context-aware applications operate, at least partially, by performing certain actions under a particular set of contextual conditions, e.g. display a reminder when I meet Peter in the coffee lounge. This principle underpins our work on stick-e notes.

	MCFE Home		Background
	Mobility		Ubiquitous Computing