Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
storage in the history of category changes. Beyond this, only information concerning
the confidence levels regarding the last process used are conserved in the history.
In order to avoid a continuous evaluation of the global confidence level for each
category, the calculation is only carried out every 20 seconds and when a business
process changes. This delay, which was determined by sociologists and
anthropologists based on field studies, enables us to ensure a good balance between
the need to limit the calculation burden on information systems and the need to
regularly determine the category changes.
In the context of our approach, it is possible to only use sure methods of category
change for certain applications and for other applications only uncertain methods.
Similarly, it is possible to use both or none if the application is not sensitive to the
category of travel time use by the user.
9.3.5.
Summary and discussion
Today, with the multiplication of nomad ICT systems and available information,
the automatic adaptation of applications to their context of use is a requirement
[WAG 02]. In the context of a user-based approach, part of the notion of context is
based on the needs and expectations of users in relation to their ICT systems. As
such, in the field of transport, an element of context that the applications must be
able to take into account is the notion of travel time experience of users.
In this chapter, based on the categorization suggested in Figure 9.3, we have put
forward a global method for taking this element of context into account via:
- a new approach to the analysis of needs;
- an integration of the adaptation to this element of context in the conceptual
models in the context of an IDM-type approach;
- methods for the consideration of category changes, whether these changes
occur explicitly or implicitly.
Although this enables this type of adaptation to be dealt with, a question still
remains unanswered: how relevant is the consideration of this contextual element
and, more specifically, how relevant are the adaptations to be carried out?
By analyzing the relevance of the use of different menu typologies within an
application (static menus, adaptable menus, adaptive menus), works have shown that
the automatic adaptations were not always the ideal solution when making menus
more relevant and easier to use [FIN 04]. In the context of the consideration of the
travel time experience of users in applications, we can ask whether it is relevant to
