A reference model for situation-aware assistance

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.