User talk:Harikrishna

Dikku - the User Context framework

This section is to track the discussions on the implementation of "User Context" in KDE. For a more general understanding of context in Nepomuk, check out here for the basics and here for the details.

What is User Context?

Though there are numerous definitions of Context out there, we would like to refine the important aspects of context to the aspects of "user context":

• what you are doing (activity),
• where you are (location),
• who you are with (contacts), and
• what resources and devices are relevant now...

In general, the meaning of the word "context" is not defined and talking about the word "context" in discussions is unfruitful. We are Understanding Context Before Using It and use the term "user context" deliberately, understanding it as "activity, location, contacts, and resources relevant to the work the user is doing at the moment".

Why Dikku?

Typically, Desktop applications and widgets have been available just like normal tools which are in no way more "intelligent" than their physical counterparts (ok, apart from their ability to undo things ;) in that they just do exactly what the users tell them to (of course, bugs don't count here!). Nothing less, nothing more!

They have been heaped with loads of functionality which just adds to the clutter the user is already facing with the growing information-overload. They do nothing more that will help the user to reduce his overload, apart from what he tells them to do. So, something has to be done to tackle this now, when information overload is increasing and things are becoming more mobile!!

Continuing the passion for desktop innovation with KDE, we want to induce in our apps the "intelligence" to adjust themselves to the work the user is currently doing. Hence ....

Dikku is a new user context framework that exposes the current user activity and location to both plasma widgets as well as other applications, thus enabling them to adjust themselves to the user's needs.

Terms Used

Dikku means direction in Tamil; when we get lost we generally establish context of where we are based on direction. Currently when we are lost in information, we could look forward to Dikku for assisting us ;) So, I think the name fits. Any suggestions ?

Activities are a "more casual" term for things that range from organized content like projects (which have deadlines, tasks and resources) to adhoc grouping of apps and widgets for a purpose (like in virtual desktops).

Current Plans

Currently we plan to track the following information in Dikku:

• the current activity the user is working on
• the list of all currently known activities
• the list of previously touched resources as indexed in soprano
• the list of previously touched PIMO things as described here in the PIMOShell
• geographical location of the user
• whatever else we dream up ... =)

and allow for:

• the creation of new activities
• the association of resources and things with an activity

The context framework could be implemented in three phases:

• Phase 1 : Focus on global context and user productivity
• Phase 2 : Focus on app-specific observers and knowledge reuse
• Phase 3 : Possibly introduce semi-AI things

As Nepomuk project has already handled the bulk of work by doing a lot of research in this area, we can just reuse whatever is possible from them (the beauty of open source !)... Check out related Nepomuk links

Overview

The design decisions taken in this framework are listed in a separate page.

The Architecture of Dikku can be split into three major parts:

1. Data Model - how the information is actually stored. We plan to use existing Nepomuk ontologies here

2. Learning Model - how the system observes the user, understands what he is doing and learns to suggest things to the user and other interested agents (apps and widgets)

3. Interaction Model - how the interested agents adjusts themselves according to the system suggestion; and how the user deals the system and possibly corrects its assumptions to start getting results!

The main component where all three architecture parts come together will be a Dikku-usercontext daemon.

Usecases

• Changing focus when user switches activity
• Changing focus when user location changes
• Intelligent suggestions by the system
• Knowledge reuse

Similar Projects

Though we are not aware of any other context framework that ships with the desktop, there are a few projects which give a fair attempt at context-awareness. Some of them (with downloadable code) are listed below:

• Marcopolo for OSX - Application that can be configured to do various things based on context
• Project Aura by Carnegie Mellon Univ. to model "a distraction-free Ubiquitous Computing" that offers personalized support to a user's activities at any location
• PLUM: towards lifetime user modeling by CSAIL@MIT.
• Tasktop Technologies As you work on a task, Tasktop automatically tracks the documents and web pages you access, showing you only the ones relevant to that task.