Ubiquitous monitoring and user behaviour: A preliminary model

Abstract

Recent advances in ubiquitous computing are turning our environments into smart spaces, where technology is embedded into the physical environment. Significant levels of data must be constantly and ubiquitously collected to provide much of the new functionality; a process we refer to as ubiquitous monitoring. Existing research has shown that monitoring can often cause undesirable effects, such as increases in stress, and with the increased coverage of ubiquitous monitoring, we anticipate an increase in the impact of such effects. So far, a limited amount of research has investigated the impact of this new technology on users. As such, we propose a preliminary model consisting of a series of factors believed to influence user/occupant behaviour and augmented by the Theory of Planned Behaviour for explaining and potentially predicting any undesirable effects. As the model has the characteristic of system dynamics, a preliminary (proof of concept) simulation was carried out to examine the influence of each factor on one another, both directly and indirectly.