Harnessing User Contexts to Enable Flowable Services Model

Abstract

Services are expected to be a promising way for people to use information and computing resources in the emerging ubiquitous network society. In this study, we propose a metaphoric concept called flowable service. It is defined as a logical stream that organizes and provides circumjacent services in such a way that they are perceived by individuals as those naturally embedded in their surrounding environments. We present our view on how some of these problems, such as flexibility, portability and interoperability of services, can be solved using the flowable services to make seamless integration of diverse services in an intuitive "flowable" way possible, thus achieving maximum satisfaction of both service providers and consumers while decreasing the delivery cost of services. Recognizing the importance of the awareness of each individual's context for smooth and accurate provision of services, we conceive the flowable service framework that harnesses users' contexts to enable pro-active support of human activities in a flexible and natural way. Owing to context-awareness, the framework is able to find and integrate the circumjacent services that are considered to be needed by each individual, and create an ambient service environment tailored to his/her particular needs, proclivities and characteristics.

An adaptively emerging mechanism for context-aware service selections regulated by feedback distributions

“…A flow of service is a metaphor for a subconsciously controlled navigation that guides the user through fulfillment of a flowable service process that fits the user's context and situation and runs smoothly with unbroken continuity in an unobtrusive and supportive way. An FSM puts a large emphasis on knowing the users for the purpose of intuitively providing the required services and, thus, increasing the level of satisfaction of the user (For more details, refer to [21][22][23]). …”

Reasoning about Context Information in Cloud Computing Environments

“…Context provides flexibility and adaptation to services. A flowable service, which is a new notion of context-aware cloud computing services, is a logical stream that organizes and provides circumjacent services in such a way that they are perceived by individuals as those naturally embedded in their surrounding environments [5,6,[10][11][12][13][14]. A flow of service is a metaphor for a subconsciously controlled navigation that guides the user through ful-fillment of a flowable service process that fits the user's context and situation and runs smoothly with unbroken continuity in an unobtrusive and supportive way.…”

“…The original intention of the flowable service model is to apply resources in open cloud environments [5,6,[10][11][12][13][14]. The model uses intensifying context information to adjust services flow to be more usable.…”