Multi-contextuality in ubiquitous computing: Investigating the car case through action research

This paper reports on a grounded action research study with the objective of developing and testing design principles for handling multi-contextuality in an increasingly important ubiquitous computing environment - the car. Already supporting people's everyday mobility and promising to provide ubiquitous availability of computing and communication infrastructure, the car is indeed a relevant setting for investigating the co-existence of different use contexts in ubiquitous computing. Contributing to the early stage of the ubiquitous computing research tradition, this paper not only empirically demonstrates that the car as a ubiquitous computing environment can improve the convenience of people's everyday mobile device use by providing multi-contextual support. The paper also suggests our design principles and their associated socio-technical implications to be valid for other ubiquitous computing environments. Indeed, synchronizing fluid use patterns, scaling service manipulation, and signaling context-switches through awareness support lie at the heart of weaving ubiquitous computing environments conveniently into the fabric of people's everyday mobility.