Supporting Ubiquitous Interaction in Dynamic Shared Spaces through Automatic Group Formation Based on Social Context

Abstract

Abstract-This paper investigates how the management of groups that communicate electronically, such as group formation, can be simplified based on users' context and social relations. This work builds on a framework for Aggregated Social Graphs, where each node represents the relational strength to other users. The strength of a relation is calculated by utilizing information on how we communicate using mobile phone calls, emails, and social networks in combination with additional sources of information such as from calendars. A contextual group management schema is presented where contextual parameters such as tags, locations and objects are used to prune an aggregated social graph in order to automatically form a group.The schema is implemented in a runtime environment based on the Distributed Shared Memory service available at Ericsson Labs. The feasibility of the proposed schema is then studied through a prototype implementation both in a web-browser and as a mobile app. The study shows that a group can be formed automatically and that a lightweight communication session then can be initiated for that group.

End-user creation of social apps by utilizing web-based social components and visual app composition

“…The availability of these services drive the technical development where, for instance, smartphones without a significant number of apps are less attractive to users [10]. There is, thus, a strong incentive to make it easier to build and deploy social media services, while also offering possibilities for personalization and more effective social distribution mechanisms [26,25].…”

“…An important feature is that social components can provide new ways of managing contacts and initiating communication. For instance, using the social components proposed in this paper, users are able to generate mashups to visualize global contacts, forming groups by adapting contexts [26], and connecting social contacts for different interaction purposes [25].…”