Abstract. One of the cornerstones of any intelligent entity is the ability to understand how occurrences in the surrounding world influence its own behaviour. Different states, or situations, in its environment should be taken into account when reasoning or acting. When dealing with different situations, context is the key element used to infer possible actions and information needs. The activities of the perceiving agent and other entities are arguably one of the most important features of a situation; this is equally true whether the agent is artificial or not. This work proposes the use of Activity Theory to first model context and further on populate the model for assessing situations in a pervasive computing environment. Through the socio-technical perspective given by Activity Theory, the knowledge intensive context model, utilised in our ambient intelligent system, is designed.

Abstract. Ambient Intelligence is a research area that has gained a lot of attention in recent years. One of the most important issues for ambient intelligent systems is to perceive the environment and assess occurring situations, thus allowing systems to behave intelligently. As the ambient intelligence area has been largely technology driven, the abilities of systems to understand their surroundings have largely been ignored. This work demonstrates the first steps towards an ambient intelligent system, which is able to appreciate the environment and reason about occurring situations. This situation awareness is achieved through knowledge intensive case-based reasoning.

ABSTRACT. Today the computer is changing from a big, grey, and noisy thing on our desk to

Patients with advanced cancer are influenced by the disease itself and by treatment side effects, both of which may have great impact on their lives. One of the most distressing symptoms is pain. However, pain in cancer patients can in most cases be relieved if the patient is able to communicate the nature and severity of the problem to the healthcare professionals through an effective assessment process. The main goal of this paper is to help form an understanding of central patient characteristics that should be taken into account when designing pain assessment tools for patients with advanced cancer. Traditionally, pain has been assessed by paper-based questionnaires and pain drawings. An iterative study was conducted based on repeated cycles of usability testing of a computerized pain body map for communicating pain by advanced cancer patients. Our aim was to provide a patient interface that most patients were able to interact with, collecting valuable, granular pain information with a minimum of strain on the patient. Through this process, we identified and solved design issues related to the sickest and frailest cancer patients. We further created a web-based solution for collecting individual pain drawings for evaluation by clinicians. The concept was appreciated by the patients, and the information provided was considered valuable by physicians. The main contribution of this paper is a list of suggestions to guide the design of an interactive tool for patients with advanced cancer.

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