Just stumbled upon one of Gartner’s predictions for strategic technologies in 2011. What is great to see is that context-aware computing as well as ubiquitous computing are becoming mainstream and is now considered to be the topic with high impact.
From a TechRepublic article:
The idea here is that social analytics and computing leads to knowledge about preferences. User interfaces would change based on context. Today, it’s all reactive. By 2011 to 2013, there will be more proactive alerts. By 2014 to 2018, you’ll have context integrated with enterprise systems. Ultimately, there will be a context platform. Portals, mashups, mobile, and social will combine. Vendors will offer “user experience platforms.”
Great to see that a favorite research topic of mine is now getting hyped.
But not only in the marketing-driven world, this is becoming a hot topic, we are also still working on the subject in exciting projects and initiatives, e.g., in the field of ambient assisted living (universAAL, openAAL), adaptive user interfaces for users with special needs (myUI), or supporting learning at the workplace (MIRROR). The key challenge here is not making systems context-aware, but actually detecting the context.