Evaluating the adaptation of multimedia services using a constraints-based approach

Abstract

This chapter presents a proposal to solve the problem of the adaptation of multimedia services in mobile contexts. The chapter combines context-awareness techniques with user interface modeling to dynamically adapt telecommunications services to user resources, in terms of terminal and network conditions. The solution is mainly characterized by the approach used for resolving the existing dependencies among user interface variables, which is based on the constraints theory. The experiments and tests carried out with these techniques demonstrate a general improvement of the adaptation of multimedia services in mobile environments, in comparison to systems that do not dynamically integrate the user context information in the adaptation process. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.