Designing Application as a Sensor (AaaS) approach for user attention sensing

This paper proposes a novel “Application as a Sensor” (AaaS) approach for user attention status sensing in mobile and ubiquitous computing where user attends to ubicomp-related goal-directed tasks that usually involve in “applications”. By using information in the application layer including application-specific knowledge on user's attention status while user manipulates applications on multiple mobile devices, the underlying system can sense user's current attention target and “breakpoint” [1] that can be used for further attention-aware adaptation for maintaining user's productivity, in mobile devices, in real-time, without dedicated external psycho-physiological sensors.