End-user Configuration for Pervasive Computing Environments

Pervasive computing systems are highly complex distributed systems. Due to their intrinsic heterogeneity and dynamism, applications must reconfigure themselves continuously to adapt to changes in their execution context. In addition, applications influence their context themselves, e.g., by outputting audio. This may lead to conflicts, when applications interfere with each other or disturb users in the vicinity. To handle such conflicts, we propose a dynamic conflict management system that detects and resolves conflicts at runtime. In this paper we focus on how the system can be used by end-users in order to tailor a pervasive system to the user's preferences. By defining individual conflicts in a conflict specification our system ensures that system states which are unacceptable for the user are automatically detected and resolved. We present our approach, discuss our proposed conflict notation and evaluate the users' acceptability of our notation with a short user study.