Jason Pascoe at the House of Commons SET Week 1999 event

Jason Pascoe's work on the MCFE project was selected as one of 50 examples of innovative work by young researchers for display at the House of Commons during SET (Science, Engineering and Technology) Week 1999.

View the poster display prepared for the event (a 440kb JPEG image) and download the color handout (a 3.9mb zipped postcript file). The remainder of this page presents the majority of the information to be found in these materials:

The Computer Scientist and the... Rhino?!!

The aim of our research is to explore how electronic devices can be imbued with an awareness of their context of use, to investigate the practical applications of this context-awareness, and to develop technologies to support its use in various devices and programs.

What is Context-Awareness?

Context-awareness is the ability of an electronic device, such as a handheld computer or mobile phone, to sense various aspects of its environment and utilise this information by reacting or adapting to its current situation. For example, if a mobile phone is aware that its owner is currently observing a rhinoceros then it may choose to use the silent vibrating alarm mode rather than an audible alarm that could infuriate the rhino!

As electronic devices become increasingly ubiquitous and mobile, so too does context-awareness become increasingly important. Unlike desktop computers that are blissfully unaware of their surroundings, computers that we take everywhere and use anywhere need to adapt to their dynamic context of use in order to prove effective tools.

An African Application

To explore how context-awareness could be usefully employed we collaborated with a group of ecologists in order to provide them with a tool to assist in their research work at a Kenyan game reserve dedicated to the preservation of the black rhino. During their 2-month study of giraffe behaviour we developed a context-aware data collection tool consisting of a handheld computer linked to a global positioning system receiver. This allowed the ecologists to record their observations in a much faster, easier, and more reliable way than was previously possible (accumulating just over 6000 individual giraffe observations by the end of the project).

Successful Ideas

There are two generally applicable ideas central to the success of our data collection tool:

1. MAUIs (Minimal Attention User Interfaces). These are interfaces that can be operated in the periphery of the user's attention without distraction from the task at hand. For example, they may allow the user to operate the computer equipment with only one hand and without the need to look at the computer. This is critical if trying to observe a giraffe, watch out for lions, and record observation data all at once! The principle is also useful in less dramatic circumstances, e.g. a businessperson wanting to check today's schedule in their electronic diary whilst walking to work with briefcase in hand.

2. Context-Awareness. A simple knowledge of location was employed in the prototype software so that all the recorded notes were annotated with the exact location in which they were created. This in itself is extremely useful to the ecologists, but additionally notes could also be displayed in context. For example, a note describing the observations of a particular rhino would be automatically displayed to the ecologist should they re-enter the location in which it was recorded. In effect, this provides an encyclopaedia of knowledge indexed by context so that information relevant to the user's current situation is displayed on their handheld computer; a technique just as useful to electronic Post-it notes and tourist guides as it is to ecology fieldwork.

Current & Future Work

Having discovered some useful principles and applications of context-awareness, we are now working on providing a general technological infrastructure that would enable any program or application on a computer, or other electronic appliance, to become aware of, and make use of, its context of use. Our collaboration with the ecologists also continues through improving the data collection tools and experimenting with more specific applications such as a rhino identification and tracking tool. We are also interested in exploring how our work could be commercially exploited.

Acknowledgements

The majority of this work has been carried out in the 'Mobile Computing in a Fieldwork Environment' project, funded by the JISC Technology Applications Program (JTAP), grant number JTAP-3/217. Many thanks are due to Kathy Pinkney, Carol Entwistle, and Alan Birkett of Manchester Metropolitan University for their assistance and enthusiasm, and their stimulating ecology fieldwork projects.

MCFE Home