With a Little Help from My Friends”: Context Aware Help and Guidance Using the Social Network

Abstract

People are more mobile than ever before. People predominantly need information or help that they can not anticipate and plan for before they begin their journey. There is an abundance of information around us. But the users seek precise and fine–grained information that is not provided by the computing environment but required to carry out their tasks. Especially nomadic users have little choice than to call upon help from other people present in their vicinity. There are social issues (e.g. availability and interruptibility) along with the issues of relevance and reliability to find the most appropriate person to ask for any information or help. Identifying this person is still a challenge today. In this chapter we provide a thorough and grounded discussion of the state of the art of help systems that glean answers from human.We also present the software prototype Ubiquitous–Help–System (UHS) that has been developed to demonstrate how using a social network in combination with the user profile and preferences, can assist a nomadic user. The system assists the nomadic user to find people who can support him in a large scale ubiquitous computing environment.