In the early days of computing, the context in which systems were used was strongly defined by the place in which computers were set up, see Figure 14.3. Personal computers were used in office environments or on factory floors. The context of use did not change much, and there was little variance in the situations surrounding the computer. Hence, there was no need to adapt to different environments. Many traditional methods in the discipline of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), such as contextual inquiry or task analysis, have their origin in this period and are most easy to use in situations that do not constantly change. With the rise of mobile computers and ubiquitous computing, this changed. Users take computers with them and use them in many different situations, see Figure 14.4.
At the beginning of the mobile computing era, in the late 80s and 90s, the central theme was how to make mobility transparent for the user, automatically providing the same service everywhere. Here, transparent meant that the user did not have to care about changes in the environment and could rely on the same functionality independent of the environment.
In the early 90s, research into ubiquitous computing at Xerox PARC caused a shift in thinking. In addition to making functionality transparent, such as providing network connectivity throughout a campus without the user realizing the hand-over between different networks, researchers discovered the potential to exploit the context of use as a resource to which systems can be adapted. In his 1994 paper at the Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA), Bill Schilit introduces the concept of context-aware computing and describes it as follows:
“ Such context-aware software adapts according to the location of use, the collection of nearby people, hosts, and accessible devices, as well as to changes to such things over time. A system with these capabilities can examine the computing environment and react to changes to the environment. ”