Situated Computing: A Paradigm for the Mobile User-Interaction with Multimedia Sources

Today, users interact with computers in an explicit manner and the system's response is independent from their situations. Hence, it is difficult to integrate computers with working life as embedded tools, which can facilitate users to accomplish real world objectives easily. Situated computing is a new paradigm for mobile computer users based on their physical context and activities carried out as a part of their working business. It provides the mechanism to have a mobile computer as a utility to satisfy the user's real world requirements as well as an infrastructure for the situated interaction using applications. In this paper, we are presenting a metaphor called situation metaphor to model interaction between the user and mobile computers in order to achieve expectations of situated computing. A three-layered schema is followed in developing situation metaphor. We discuss extensively the theoretical foundation and framework for the situation metaphor, and followed by applications developed based on the framework.