Runtime Generation and Delivery of Guidance for Smart Object Ensembles

Driven by the current developments in the area of the Internet of Things, the number of devices and the variety of (natural) interaction modalities which users of smart environments are confronted with are increasing. However, this trend can mentally overwhelm users due to a multitude of challenges in usability and the novel circumstances in ubiquitous surroundings. In order to reduce this cognitive load for users, guidance needs to be generated on the basis of interconnection of the devices and runtime, since the a-priori creation is not possible due to the heterogeneity of devices and their unpredictability of interconnections. Within this contribution, we present a framework which is able to generate and deliver guidance at runtime on the basis of self-descriptions of smart devices. At the same time, an API for developers is offered to extend the framework in a simple way to provide additional generators for guidance. By means of a generator for tutorials the effectiveness of this approach was evaluated with real users in a smart light scenario.