The Context Gap: An Essential Challenge to Context-Aware Computing Ph.D. Dissertation Summary

Context-aware computing is a recent approach to tailoring technology to the user’s context. As part of the vision for ubiquitous computing, it describes computing applications that change or adapt according to environmental characteristics. Research within the field have mainly focused on technical possibilities for representing a context in the use situation, however, not many context-aware applications have made it outside the test laboratories yet. I propose that one of the problems of context-aware computing is the ‘context gap,’ the gap between a sensor-derived technical representation of a context, and the social perception of a context. The context gap is inevitable and inherent in that it cannot be bridged; human context can only be represented technologically to a limited extent. In this dissertation I investigate the context gap, as it appears in contextaware computing. Other researchers have pointed to a gap between how researchers understand how the social world should be supported and what technology is capable of in relation to CSCW systems, but I address the gap as it exists in the two approaches to context-aware computing. The context gap is made visible by the new possibilities for sensor based technology and by the desire to facilitate dynamic and often mobile situations, which often introduces new challenges to interaction and interpretation for the human context. I identify two different approaches to context-aware computing: a classic approach based on the original vision of dynamic adaption to context information and a humanistic, socially-based approach based on tailoring ubiquitous computing to the overall human context. The problems arising from such gap has been pointed to by other researchers as well, but never investigated empirically. I set out to explore not only whether the context gap exists but also what contributes to it and what consequences this might have. To explore the gap, I conducted and analyzed three related case studies. They are each examining aspects of the context gap, adding to a better