Ubicomp Environments Research Articles

What Makes XR Dark? Examining Emerging Dark Patterns in Augmented and Virtual Reality through Expert Co-Design

Dark Patterns are deceptive designs that influence a user's interactions with an interface to benefit someone other than the user. Prior work has identified dark patterns in WIMP interfaces and ubicomp environments, but how dark patterns can manifest in Augmented and Virtual Reality (collectively XR) requires more attention. We therefore conducted ten co-design workshops with 20 experts in XR and deceptive design. Our participants co-designed 42 scenarios containing dark patterns, based on application archetypes presented in recent HCI/XR literature. In the co-designed scenarios, we identified ten novel dark patterns in addition to 39 existing ones, as well as ten examples in which specific characteristics associated with XR potentially amplified the effect dark patterns could have on users. Based on our findings and prior work, we present a classification of XR-specific properties that facilitate dark patterns: perception, spatiality, physical/virtual barriers, and XR device sensing. We also present the experts’ assessments of the likelihood and severity of the co-designed scenarios and highlight key aspects they considered for this evaluation, for example, technological feasibility, ease of upscaling and distributing malicious implementations, and the application's context of use. Finally, we discuss means to mitigate XR dark patterns and support regulatory bodies to reduce potential harms.

SAAQ: A Characterization Method for Distributed Servers in Ubicomp Environments.

The increasing evolution of computing technologies has fostered the new intelligent concept of Ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp). Ubicomp environments encompass the introduction of new paradigms, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Mobile computing, and Wearable computing, into communication networks, which demands more efficient strategies to deliver tasks and services, considering heterogeneity, scalability, reliability, and efficient energy consumption of the connected devices. Middlewares have a crucial role to deal with all these aspects, by implementing efficient load balancing methods based on the hardware characterization and the computational cost of the queries and tasks. However, most existing solutions do not take into account both considerations in conjunction. In this context, we propose a methodology to characterize distributed servers, services, and network delays in Ubicomp environments, based on the Server Ability to Answer a Query (SAAQ). To evaluate our SAAQ-based methodology, we implemented a simple middleware in a museum context, in which different IoT devices (e.g., social robots, mobile devices) and distributed servers with different capabilities can participate, and performed a set of experiments in scenarios with diverse hardware and software characteristics. Results show that the middleware is able to distribute queries to servers with adequate capacity, freeing from service requests to devices with hardware restrictions; thus, our SAAQ-based middleware has a good performance regarding throughput (22.52 ms for web queries), end-to-end delay communications (up to 193.30 ms between San Francisco and Amsterdam), and good management of computing resources (up to 80% of CPU consumption).

A decade of security research in ubiquitous computing: results of a systematic literature review

Purpose Ever since Mark Weiser coined the term “ubiquitous computing” (ubicomp) in 1988, there has been a general interest in proposing various solutions that would support his vision. However, attacks targeting devices and services of a ubicomp environment have demonstrated not only different privacy issues, but also a risk of endangering user’s life (e.g. by modifying medical sensor readings). Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of security challenges of ubicomp environments and the corresponding countermeasures proposed over the past decade. Design/methodology/approach The results of this paper are based on a literature review method originally used in evidence-based medicine called systematic literature review (SLR), which identifies, filters, classifies and summarizes the findings. Findings Starting from the bibliometric results that clearly show an increasing interest in the topic of ubicomp security worldwide, the findings reveal specific types of attacks and vulnerabilities that have motivated the research over the past decade. This review describes most commonly proposed countermeasures – context-aware access control and authentication mechanisms, cryptographic protocols that account for device’s resource constraints, privacy-preserving mechanisms, and trust mechanisms for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SLR on security challenges in ubicomp. The findings should serve as a reference to an extensive list of scientific contributions, as well as a guiding point for the researchers’ novel to the security research in ubicomp.

Dynamic adaptation of personal ubicomp environments

A significant challenge for personal and ubiquitous computing is to cope with frequent changes of user preferences, profile, location, and context in general. In this special issue we bring you an update on how dynamic adaptation is being used to address this challenge. Dynamic adaptation provides runtime modeling and monitoring of both structural and behavioral aspects, possibly at different levels of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model. We are thinking in particular of personal and ubiquitous computing environments assembled from a variety of custom-of-theshelf (COTS) systems that are planned to work independently of each other. Dynamic adaptation opens the door to reason about and undertake policies and strategies without compromising the functionality and integration of COTS systems in the environment. The papers in this special issue cover different aspects of dynamic adaptation in PUC.

USmell: exploring the potential for gas sensors to classify odors in ubicomp applications relative to airflow and distance

Previous research has shown that gas sensors can be used to classify odors when used in highly controlled experimental testing chambers. However, potential ubicomp applications require these sensors to perform an analysis in less controlled environments, particularly at a distance. In this paper, we discuss our design of uSmell--a gas sensor system for sensing smell in ubicomp environments--and an evaluation of its basic efficacy, effects of airflow and distance on classification accuracy, and in an example application. Our system samples an odor fingerprint from eight metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors every second. It then processes the time series data to extract three features that highlight how time and distance affect the eight MOS gas sensors' ability to react to the gas molecules released by an odor every 5 s; this generates 24 features in total that are then used to train a decision tree classifier. Using this approach, our system can classify a set of odors with 88 % accuracy when placed both in a small container with the samples and in open air 0.5---2 m from the odor samples. We also demonstrate its ability to classify odors in less controlled environments that might be targets for ubicomp applications by deploying it in a bathroom for a week. These results show the potential for applying this sensing toward the development of context-aware systems, such as lifelogging applications or those geared toward enhancing the sustainability of natural resources (e.g., an automatic dual-flush toilet that always uses an appropriate amount of water based on the user's toileting activities).

Enabling user-oriented management for ubiquitous computing: The meta-design approach

This paper presents iPlumber, a user-oriented management system for ubiquitous computing environments. Different from previous low-benefit ''zero-configuration'' systems or high cognitive-cost ''end user programming'' tools, our work attempts to attain a better balance between user benefits and cost by exploring the meta-design approach. A set of typical management activities in ubicomp environments are supported, from basic-level software sharing, foraging, and low-cost software configuration to advanced-level cooperative software co-design and error handling. These activities are elaborated through a smart home control scenario. The usability of our system is validated through an initial user study with a total of 33 subjects to test the management activities from an open exhibition environment and a controlled university environment.

유시티 콘텐츠를 위한 시공간 온톨로지 구축 방법

유비쿼터스 환경에서 획득되는 정보들은 시공간의 틀 속에서 서로 만나 관계성을 가지게 됨으로써 지식화되고, 업무 또는 어플리케이션 모델과 결합하여 지능화된 콘텐츠로 변화하게 된다. 따라서, 유시티 콘텐츠를 구성하는 개체들은 복잡한 관계들을 가진다. 유시티 콘텐츠는 사용자의 의도를 파악하여 개인화된 응답을 제공하는 지능성을 갖추어야 한다. 본 연구에서는 SPIRIT의 공간 온톨로지 설계 방법을 확장하여 사람 또는 사물에 대하여도 유형, 관계, 인스턴스의 세 가지 온톨로지로 구성하였다. 공유된 개념의 관계 모델이 없는 경우의 인스턴스들 간의 관계는 어떤 시공간적 사건을 통한 관계로 설정하였다. 이렇게 함으로써 문자열 매칭에 의한 연관어에 비하여, 반드시 의미적 관련성을 갖는 연관어들을 추천할 수 있게 하였다. Information in UbiComp Environment are transformed to knowledge by relationship in a spatio-temporal location, and then became intelligent contents with task procedures or application models. The entities in U-City has lots of relationships. It is important in U-City contents to provide intelligent and personalized response to meet the intention of users. We extend the spatial ontology model of SPIRIT to other domain. Domain ontologies are consist of type, relation, and instance ontologies. When the relationship model by shared concepts are not defined, we used the spatio-temporal events to find relationships. So we proposed the methods to recommend semantically related terms, not syntactically.

Agent-Based Middleware for Advanced Communication Services in a Ubiquitous Computing Environment

In a ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environment, system components of different types, including hardware elements, software components, and network connections, must cooperate mutually to provide services that fulfill user requirements. Consequently, advanced and flexible characteristics of software that are specialized for a ubicomp environment are needed. This article presents a proposal of an agent-based middleware for a ubicomp environment comprising computers and home electric appliances. The middleware, called AMUSE, can take quality of service (QoS) in a ubicomp environment into consideration by coping not only with user context but also with the resource context, using agent-based computing technology. Herein, we describe the concept, design, and initial implementation of AMUSE. Simulation results of an experimental ubiquitous service using AMUSE demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme. Additionally, to confirm our scheme’s feasibility and effectiveness, we describe the initial implementation of a multimedia communication application based on AMUSE.

An Alignment Approach for Context Prediction Tasks in UbiComp Environments

The authors detail the alignment prediction approach-a time-series-estimation technique applicable to both numeric and nonnumeric data-and compare it to four other prediction approaches to determine context-prediction accuracy in ubiquitous computing environments.

Towards the realisation of context-risk-aware access control in pervasive computing

This paper proposes a novel Context-Risk-Aware Access Control (CRAAC) model for Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) environments. Context-aware access control allows access permissions to be adjusted dynamically in adaptation to the changes in the surrounding context. Though current context-aware access control solutions can, to a certain extent, achieve such context adaptation, there are still limitations in these solutions. One of the limitations is that they make use of an architectural model by which the two major functional blocks, context infrastructure and access control system, are tightly coupled together. As a result, they are not flexible nor generic to accommodate various access control constraints and policy settings. The CRAAC model is designed to overcome this limitation. By introducing the concept of risk aware and authorisation levels of assurance (LoA) into the authorisation decision making, and by maximising the use of a component-based approach in the architectural design, the model has successfully decoupled context infrastructure and access control system making it more extensible in providing the required functionality, and more flexible in accommodating different contextual attributes and their mutual correlation. In addition, it interoperates and is backward compatible with traditional role-based access control solutions.

Service Students' Zoned Utility of Mobile-Technology: Implications for learning space & experience design

A study of services-sector management students demonstrated widespread organisational and entertainment utility relating to the use of mobile technology devices in and around campus environments. Nevertheless, although generally positively motivated towards ‘mobiles’ as social and personally integrated lifestyle and organisational aids, some negative attitudes were displayed towards extensive use of mobiles as Mlearning facilitators. These included an awareness of constant communicability, conspicuous technology consumption, solipsistic, diversionary and ‘lazy’ learning drawbacks. Defined limits were placed around various elements of technology within a UbiComp environment relating to social, study or work technology utility (tec-utility) zones with only limited crossover zones of tolerance.

Design and Implementation of An Advanced Communication Framework for Ubiquitous Computing Environment

Event Abstract Back to Event Design and Implementation of An Advanced Communication Framework for Ubiquitous Computing Environment Taishi Ito1, 2*, Hideyuki Takahashi1, Takuo Suganuma1, 2, Tetsuo Kinoshita2, 3 and Norio Shiratori1, 2 1 Tohoku University, Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Japan 2 Tohoku University, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Japan 3 Tohoku University, Cyberscience Center, Japan Various computing technologies such as sensor networks, embedded computers, and wireless access networks are already in general use and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environment that is based on those technologies is expected to become widespread. However, limitations of availability of hardware including computer and sensor systems and network resources exist, thus application systems in the ubicomp environment (ubiquitous applications) are required to have the ability to adapt to situations of computational environment [1]. There are many studies on agent-based middleware. A system that is composed by agent-based middleware has high adaptation ability to environments. Hence, the agent-based middleware is expected to be a potential framework to develop effectively the ubiquitous applications. However, it is difficult to apply the traditional agent-based middleware to ubiquitous application due to inefficiency of communication among agents. This problem is originated from the limitations of the computational resource in the ubicomp environment, and one and only one inter-platform communication scheme is statically used without considering the situations of computational resources. Here, communication between agents is the "inter-agent communication". Messages exchanged for the inter-agent communication are sent through the communication channel between agent platforms. This communication channel is called "inter-platform communication". For example, when an agent sends a message to other agent in a remote host, then the agent platform transmits the message to the platform on the opposite site by using the inter-platform communication.We propose an advanced communication framework for agent-based middleware. This framework can select a communication scheme flexibly based on situations of the computational resources and properties of inter-agent communications. We show an example of our proposed mechanism in Figure 1. In this figure, agents communicate with each other with specified semantics of their objectives and the inter-platform communication scheme is used according to the requirements of the inter-agent communication. We have been developing a prototype system. This prototype system consists of Network Resource Monitor, Inter-agent Communication Monitor, Communication Scheme Selector, and Inter-platform Communicator. The Communication Scheme Selector is a key component in the proposed mechanism that decides which inter-platform communication scheme is suitable. We performed two experiments for confirming the efficiency of the proposed mechanism. The experimental service consists of “Server” and “Audience”. Audience reports a transmission rate control message to Server, and Server transmits the real-time data streaming to Audience. The access network of the Audience is PHS (Exp.1) and FOMA (Exp.2). To measure the efficiency, we defined “Response Time” which is the temporal difference between the time when Audience reported a transmission rate control message and the time when Audience received a data. The experimental result is shown in Table 1. The average Response Time of the proposed mechanism is smaller than that of the traditional mechanism, and the standard deviation of the Response Time in proposed mechanism is 20 % to 30 % smaller than that of traditional mechanism. Therefore, the proposed mechanism can improve service response time with both cases of the access networks. Acknowledgement: This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, 19200005. fig 2 fig 1

AR interfacing with prototype 3D applications based on user-centered interactivity

Augmented Reality (AR) has been acclaimed as one of the promising technologies for advancing future UbiComp (Ubiquitous Computing) environments. Despite a myriad of AR applications and its influence on the human-computer interaction field, end products that integrate AR are less commonplace than expected. This is due to a lack of being able to forecast in which direction mainstream standardization of AR-oriented platform components will be framed. It is mainly due to a focus on technology issues in implementing reasonable AR solutions, which also results in difficulty in initiating AR research and creating prototype test-beds. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive review of AR prototyping trends and AR research activities. Through the technical review of a de facto AR prototyping method, we remark upon the key elements of AR techniques, and then present an alternative view of the AR environment centered on end-user advantages in interaction, which is characterized by three features: intuitive observation, informative visualization, and immersive interaction. In addition, we believe that these features can be used to motivate the integration of AR technology into custom-built 3D applications. In this paper, we propose a conceptual schema and an architectural framework for generic AR prototyping. On the basis of these, a video see-through AR interface is integrated into three prototype 3D applications in 3 different domains: engineering systems, geospace, and multimedia. As the case studies for validating our integration, we present three sample AR applications; (a) an AR-interfaced 3D CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) simulation test-bed, (b) a two-stage distributed Traveler Guidance Service (TGS) test-bed based on a GIS database and AR, and (c) a haptically-enhanced broadcasting test-bed for AR-based 3D media production. For each application, a description of the test-bed implementation, demonstration of the feasibility and usefulness and AR-specific technical challenges are included in this paper.

Multichannel Security Protocols

Multichannel security protocols transmit messages over multiple communication channels, taking into account each channel's security properties. Our first intentional use of these protocols goes back to a 1999 article that proposed physical contact for imprinting as opposed to the wireless channel used in subsequent operations. Only later did we understand three key points. First, explicit use of multiple channels in the same protocol can offer significant advantages for both security and usability. Second, explicitly stating the properties of the channel on which each protocol message is transmitted is useful for understanding one's own protocol in greater depth and therefore for addressing subtle vulnerabilities early on. Third, multichannel protocols existed long before we recognized them as such - think of the courier handcuffed to the briefcase carrying the code book that will later protect postal or telegraphic traffic. The paper presents a security protocol that exploit additional transmissions over lower-capacity channels, typically found in ubicomp environments, that offer a different combination of security properties.

Understanding privacy regulation in ubicomp interactions

Ubiquitous computing contains a huge promise for more intelligent services that are available anywhere and are able to dynamically adapt to the users' current context. However, what necessarily follows such an environment is the compromising of the users' privacy. We aim at analyzing this complex issue by applying and extending Altman's theoretical privacy framework, well known in social sciences, to privacy in ubicomp. Altman understands privacy as a two-way interactive process, which makes the approach promising in analyzing ubicomp where people, devices and the environment interact with each other. We point out similarities between the existing model and the features of ubicomp environment, and verify the results by applying and analyzing the resulting extended framework to typical ubicomp use cases. Based on the analysis, we argue that privacy in ubicomp can be modeled similarly to privacy in general by extending the model to cover such factors as mediation and non-human actors.

A Universal Model for Policy-Based Access Control-enabled Ubiquitous Computing

The initial research of Task Computing in the ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) environment revealed the need for access control of services. Context-awareness of service requests in ubiquitous computing necessitates a well-designed model to enable effective and adaptive invocation. However, nowadays little work is being undertaken on service access control under the UbiComp environment, which makes the exposed service suffer from the problem of ill-use. One of the research focuses is how to handle the access to the resources over the network. Policy-Based Access Control is an access control method. It adopts a security policy to evaluate requests for resources but has a light-weight combination of the resources. Motivated by the problem above, we propose a universal model and an algorithm to enhance service access control in UbiComp. We detail the architecture of the model and present the access control implementation.

Support for situation awareness in trustworthy ubiquitous computing application software

Due to the dynamic and ephemeral nature of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environments, it is especially important that the application software in ubicomp environments is trustworthy. In order to have trustworthy application software in ubicomp environments, situation-awareness (SAW) in the application software is needed to enforce flexible security policies and detect violations of security policies. In this paper, an approach is presented to provide development and runtime support to incorporate SAW in trustworthy ubicomp application software. The development support is to provide SAW requirement specification and automated code generation to achieve SAW in trustworthy ubicomp application software, and the runtime support is for context acquisition, situation analysis and situation-aware communication. To realize our approach, the improved Reconfigurable Context-Sensitive Middleware (RCSM) is developed to provide the above development and runtime support. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keeping ubiquitous computing to yourself: A practical model for user control of privacy

As with all the major advances in information and communication technology, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) introduces new risks to individual privacy. Our analysis of privacy protection in ubicomp has identified four layers through which users must navigate: the regulatory regime they are currently in, the type of ubicomp service required, the type of data being disclosed, and their personal privacy policy. We illustrate and compare the protection afforded by regulation and by some major models for user control of privacy. We identify the shortcomings of each and propose a model which allows user control of privacy levels in a ubicomp environment. Our model balances the user's privacy preferences against the applicable privacy regulations and incorporates five types of user controlled noise to protect location privacy by introducing ambiguities. We also incorporate an economics-based approach to assist users in balancing the trade-offs between giving up privacy and receiving ubicomp services. We conclude with a scenario and heuristic evaluation which suggests that regulation can have both positive and negative influences on privacy interfaces in ubicomp and that social translucence is an important heuristic for ubicomp privacy interface functionality.