Context-aware communication

This article describes how the changing information about an individual´s location, environment, and social situation can be used to initiate and facilitate people´s interactions with one another, individually and in groups. Context-aware communication is contrasted with other forms of context-aware computing, and we characterize applications in terms of design decisions along two dimensions: the extent of autonomy in context sensing and the extent of autonomy in communication action. A number of context-aware communication applications from the research literature are presented in five application categories. Finally, a number of issues related to the design of context-aware communication applications are presented.