Edit, Inspect and Connect your Surroundings: A Reference Framework for Meta-UIs

Abstract

Discovering and unlocking the full potential of complex pervasive environments is still approached in application-centric ways. A set of statically deployed applications often defines the possible interactions within the environment. However, the increasing dynamics of such environments require a more versatile and generic approach which allows the end-user to inspect, configure and control the overall behavior of such an environment. A meta-UI addresses these needs by providing the end-user with an interactive view on a physical or virtual environment which can then be observed and manipulated at runtime. The meta-UI bridges the gap between the resource providers and the end-users by abstracting a resource's features as executable activities that can be assembled at runtime to reach a common goal. In order to allow software services to automatically integrate with a pervasive computing environment, the minimal requirements of the environment's meta-UI must be identified and agreed on. In this paper we present Meta-STUD, a goal and service-oriented reference framework that supports the creation of meta-UIs for usage in pervasive environments. The framework is validated using two independent implementation approaches designed with different technologies and focuses.