Towards activity-based app search

We introduce a novel way to search and recommend mobile applications namely, activity-based app search. Keywords used in activity-based app search are terms such as “drinking coffee”, “during a flight”, “cooking with friends”, “driving”. We define context as What, Where, When and Whom. The results returned by activity-based app search are apps that can be used while performing the activity specified in the search (What) at a certain time (When) in a certain place (Where) within a social context (Whom). The use of any of the returned apps and the activity performed by the user will not interfere with each other. For example, activity-based app search for “cooking” will return apps to use while cooking such as Pandora Internet Radio while a traditional search for “cooking” would return apps for cooking such as cookbook apps. Out of all the many challenges that this new search paradigm introduces, we focus on the activity (i.e., What) as it is the most challenging and novel of all four.