As computers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, moving from the desktop into the infrastructure of our everyday life, they begin to influence the way we interact with this environment - the (physical) entities that we operate upon in order to achieve our daily goals. The most important aspect of future human-computer interaction therefore is the way, computers support us in efficiently managing our personal environment. Conventionally, human-computer interaction looks at a process, where only two partners are involved: the human and the computer. However, looking at the computer as a mediator between the user and his environment, we have to acknowledge a more complex communication process. This paper proposes a reference model that identifies the fundamental components which are involved in human-computer-environment interaction.
