Recent years have seen rapid growth and adoption of powerful mobile devices such as smartphones, equipped with sophisticated input and display systems, and multiple communication technologies. This trend has coincided with the rapid deployment and adoption of high-speed Internet services and web-based applications. While this rapid development of mobile technology has provided great opportunities, it also presents significant new challenges compared to traditional desktop computing. Specifically, unlike the traditional desktop computing experience where users are stationary and physically isolated, users in mobile and social settings can be faced with real time demands for their attention.
This thesis examines the relationship between mobile devices, context awareness, and mobile users. We propose the use of physical proximity context to adapt and improve system behavior, and enable mobile users to more effectively access and share content in non-desktop settings. This work identifies three distinct challenges in mobile software, and addresses these challenges using physical proximity context awareness. First we address improvements to mobile node network utilization by using proximity awareness to automatically manage local radio resources. Next we address improvements to mobile web-backed applications and services by enabling social proximity awareness. Finally, we enable greater mobility and physical awareness for visually impaired users on mobile devices by providing an interface which enables exploration of spatial geometric layouts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/26241 |
| Date | 17 February 2011 |
| Creators | Su, Jing Chih |
| Contributors | de Lara, Eyal, Goel, Ashvin |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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