Mobile situation-awareness within the project map

Mobile devices as PDAs evolve rapidly from digital calendars and address books to hosts of more complex functionality. Mobile access to business information such as customer, product or project databases is seen as one of the cutting edge IT solutions for improving productivity and customer satisfaction. However, mobility and scaled-down mobile technology lead to specific limitations in contrast to the usage of desktop computers. These restrictions are absolutely crucial to consider for the development of usable mobile applications.

With reference to the project map—Multimedia Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft (Multimedia Workplace of the Future), this article outlines our main approach to situation-aware support for mobile workers in response to mobile restrictions. We are pointing out focal components and sketch parts of the map architecture, in particular the prototypical application “BuddyAlert”.