Specification and Design Aspects of the Academic Researcher's Assistant (ARA) Software for Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are being widely and increasingly used in many areas of human activity. Designing applications for mobile devices has introduced several new challenges that are currently being addressed by interested researchers and developers. This paper explores different human-computer interaction challenges in designing an academic researcher's assistant (ARA) software application for mobile devices. ARA is a tool for mobile devices designed to provide academic researchers with a practical portable assistant that helps them organize their daily research-related activities. The paper provides details of ARA's organizing principles, software specification, design, and prototype implementation. Several directions of future work are also presented.