Deconstructing Casensa: The CAEMP context-aware empowering platform

In this paper, we deconstruct Casensa, a context-aware assisted living prototype created by Bell Labs, based on critical user participation criteria for context awareness. Casensa supports elderly with early dementia and their caregivers, providing a mechanism for more independent living. In the first part of the paper, we present refined and improved critical participation criteria based on lessons learned from user research. From this, we extract the generic design considerations that guided the design of the platform on which Casensa is actually built: the Context-Aware Empowering Platform (CAEMP). Understanding, configuring, and controlling a self-created intelligent environment form the central topics of the reworked criteria. Next, we discuss how these criteria are translated within Casensa by providing several means to let end users create their own rule-based smart behavior using their own (evolving) language and by allowing the exchange of smart behavior. In the final part of the paper, we demonstrate the technological impact on architecture and an implementation of applying the defined criteria. © 2011 Alcatel-Lucent. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.