Engineering context-aware mobile applications
Markus Aleksy · 2010
The development of mobile applications, especially that provide context-sensitive features is a rather complex and difficult task. 'Smart' and 'context-aware' systems are great for end users, if they are non-intrusive and have user-friendly interfaces, but they are hard to design, maintain and integrate. Additionally, the coverage of such applications requires the utilization of appropriate data transport, efficient resource management, as well as input- and output techniques to consider the limitations of mobile devices. In this tutorial, a set of techniques and design patterns will be presented that helps to face these challenges. The presented techniques cover various topics, especially context and resource/data management techniques as well as the design of context-sensitive user interfaces. Furthermore, the results of two case studies carried out in the domain of industrial field service will be presented to provide feedback which of the presented techniques could be successfully applied and which challenges have still to be faced.