![level of indirection level of indirection](https://static.usenix.org/event/usenix09/tech/full_papers/panta/panta_html/figRepEnergyClass2Grid2.jpeg)
The architecture allows customization and personalization of smart environments for particular people and groups, types of work, and specific physical spaces. As the system needs to fit both with the personal leadership style of the executive and the corporation’s meeting culture, we began the design process by exploring the work flow in and around meetings attended by the executive.īased on our work flow analysis and the scenarios we developed from it, USE developed a flexible, extensible architecture specifically designed to enhance ease of use in smart environment technologies. A key idea in the USE framework is that customization is one of the best ways to create a smooth user experience. Our first design prototype focuses on creating a “no wizards” room for an American executive that is, a room the executive could walk into and use by himself, without help from a technologist. The Usable Smart Environment project (USE) aims at designing easy-to-use, highly functional, next-generation conference rooms. Other developments included PostBrainstorm, a large high-resolution pen-based display to facilitate group activities such as brainstorming, and a number of other tools that extended the iRoom capacities to new devices and interaction modes. The project developed a middleware layer named iROS, based on these principles, which employed a mechanism called the Event Heap to provide robustness and dynamic loose coupling between the components. The system should be loosely coupled and robust, so that failures and changes of individual elements are gracefully handled and do not disrupt the functioning of the overall workspace. It should provide an “overface” that brings them together, rather than replacing the existing widely used interfaces. The integration should focus on commodity devices running existing operating systems and applications, so the workspace is not an isolated island.
![level of indirection level of indirection](https://www.opensourceagenda.com/projects/greggb-react-resources/image.png)
The interactions should maximize the potential for “fluency” of the users, reducing as much as possible the need to shift attention from the content of the work to the mechanism. The Stanford Interactive Workspaces project developed a set of technologies for integrating multiple devices in a co-located workspace, based on a few basic principles: The paper closes with an evaluation of the approach from the points of view of functionality and usability. These in turn determine how the home should react to various events. At run-time, high-level goals lead to selection of an optimal and conflict-free set of policies. Policies and goals are formulated in the APPEL language (Adaptable and Programmable Policy Environment and Language), and supported by the ACCENT policy system (Advanced Component Control Enhancing Network Technologies). The component architecture is based on OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative). This is achieved at three levels: managing home components and their interactions, stating policies for how the home system should react to events, and defining high-level goals for what the user wishes to achieve. The aim is to allow end users to manage their homes without requiring detailed technical knowledge or programming ability. An approach is presented for flexible management of smart homes, covering both home automation and telecare.