Supporting Persistent Social Groups in Ubiquitous Computing Environments Using Context-Aware Ephemeral Group Management*

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Supporting Persistent Social Groups in Ubiquitous
Computing Environments Using Context-Aware
Ephemeral Group Management

• Bin Wang, John Bodily and Sandeep K. S. Gupta
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering
• Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering
• Arizona State University
• Supported by NSF

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Imagine You are _at_ Percom05 in Hawaii!

• Enhance the experience of conference attendees
  with pervasive computing group technology
• Each attendee with multiple pervasive device
• Automatic various social groups are formed to
  facilitate social interaction!
• Percom05
• Surfer group
• Satyas fan club
• Panel Discussion Group To Percomp or not
  Percomp?
• Imagine the richness of interaction that is
  possible!

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Research Question?

• What are the properties of a social group that
  concern us in regards to Ubicomp environments?
• How do social groups relate to context aware
  computing?
• Construction of an approach to leverage the
  properties of social groups.

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Social Groups

• Defined in 1 as A number of individuals,
  defined by formal or informal criteria of
  membership, who share a feeling of unity or are
  bound together in relatively stable patterns of
  interaction.

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Persistence of a Social Group

• Derived from the stability of membership and
  group interactions when compared against the
  lifetime of an average computing session
• Generally cuts across computing session boundaries

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Social Context

• Information relevant to the characterization of a
  situation that influences the interactions of one
  user with one or more other users.
• Social mores and norms are an example of a social
  context
• Ex It is a norm to consider a cell-phone ringing
  in a theatre as rude.

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SmartClassroom Example

• Peer review for a software engineering report
• Student use special software on PDAs to support
  the review process as a team
• Should work regardless of network infrastructure
• Group has roles of reviewer, recorder, author,
  and moderator.

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Example Cont.
Start Peer Review

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Example Cont.
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Example Cont.
End Peer Review

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Challenges of Supporting Social Groups in Ubicomp
Environments

• Social Group Management
• Sensing social context
• View maintenance
• Preserving privacy
• Minimize user distraction through proactiveness
• Facilitating Group Communication
• Determining when an interaction is going to occur
• Determining when an interaction is going to end
• Supporting periodic ephemeral interactions in
  environments with varying network capabilities

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A Solution for Supporting Social Groups in
Ubicomp Environments

• System and Group Model
• Context-Aware Ephemeral Group (CAEG) Membership
  Management
• Group Chat Application
• Prototype CAEG and Chat Application
• Related Work
• Conclusions

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System Model- Idealized Future Pervasive
Computing Environment

1. Users carry one or more ubicomp devices that can
   be networked wirelessly.
2. Ample bandwidth
3. Users need to collaborate using peer-to-peer
   application software over a mobile ad-hoc
   network.
4. No Byzantine failure in the system.
5. Clocks can be synchronized between devices within
   application tolerance limits.

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Group Model Assumptions

• Computer systems should facilitate the users
  view of the social group in terms of membership
  and collaborative interactions.
• Feedback from user is desired, not full system
  automation
• Assumes that some mechanism for achieving
  consensus exists in regards to membership.
• Likewise selecting discovering and joining a
  group can be non-trivial.

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Group Model Introduction

• Model addresses the need to facilitate group
  membership and routines with minimum system
  set-up. (minimize human distraction)
• Goal is to support social groups in a manner that
  uses minimal cognitive effort, and gives the
  perception that a device is a group collaboration
  tool

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Group Model Components

• Definition of device context
• Detailed description of group model
• How does the system model support the detection
  of the beginning and ending of group interactions?

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Device Context

• Device Context Any detectable and relevant
  attribute of a device, its interaction with
  external devices, and/or its surrounding
  environment at an instant of time.

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Relationship of Groups in the Model
Specifies device context that correspond to group
session initiation and termination.
Abstraction of social context
Collaboration tool.
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User Group

• A social group that the end-user interacts with.
• Expected to have stable patterns of interaction.
• User Group Session time period for which the
  members of a user group are actively
  participating in interactions with one another.

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Device Group

• One or more devices that form a complete unit in
  composition to collectively support computational
  tasks on behalf of the user-group.
• User views this as a group that forms to
  facilitate group collaboration.

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User Group Profile

• Provides a representation of social contexts that
  are important to the user group.
• Used by a device to support a users specific
  role or preferences.
• Includes a unique identifier, user preferences, a
  group purpose, and the users role.

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Group Session Profile

• Used to represent the contexts that characterize
  the beginning and ending of a user group session.
• Should include the time period of the group
  session, and the location where the group session
  will occur.

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Support for Social Groups by Model

• Supports users perception of identity that is
  tied to the group by automating device group
  formation using the GSP during the lifetime of
  group membership.
• Uses social contexts in the UGP to support the
  users preferences and roles.

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Context-Aware Ephemeral Group Membership
Management

• Uses context to manage a group view for devices
  over wireless ad-hoc networks
• Contexts that govern group formation are based on
  the contexts found in the Group Session Profile

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Reconfigurable Context-SensitiveMiddleware
(RCSM)

• RCSM is a middleware to enable context sensitive
  ad hoc interaction among devices in MANET.
• Combines the power of abstraction of mainstream
  middleware specifications with the performance
  and economy of hardware.

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Principal features

• Context-Aware Interface Definition Language
  (CA-IDL) for specifying context-sensitive object
  interfaces for applications in pervasive
  computing environments.
• An RCSM-Object Request Broker (R-ORB) to manage
  context-triggered communication channels among
  devices in mobile ad hoc networks.
• Context-sensitive service distribution and
  discovery to facilitate optimized service
  information exchange among the devices.
• Adaptive object containers (ADCs) that detect
  application-specific context and invokes the
  methods of context-sensitive objects.
•  Support for Ephemeral Group Communication

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RCSM Architecture
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Group Chat Application

• Uses the services provided by the CAEG to
  implement a chat application for Windows CE.
• Allows users to communicate via unicast/multicast
  text messages, and exchange files.

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Conclusions and Future Work

• Explored the properties of the social group, and
  defined social context
• Groups in Ubicomp environments need services to
  manage membership, and stable predictable
  routines
• Defined a conceptual model that allows for the
  representation and interpretation of contexts to
  support group membership management and routines
  through context-awareness.
• Usability testing

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References

• G. Marshall and et. all. The Concise Oxford
  Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press,
  Great Britain, 1994.
• For more information http//shamir.eas.asu.edu/mc
  n or http//www.eas.asu.edu/rcsm