This video explores how Consia, a device resident technology from Qualcomm, tracks user behaviour and uses the knowledge to enhance the experience, from low level decisions about battery life and radio usage, to UI tweaks. It is part of a broader strategy at Qualcomm around context aware experiences (see earlier post on the Gimbal SDK, which exposes some of these functions to third party developers).

Using sensors and other device capabilities in a power efficient way mapped to user behaviour profiles will be an important factor if context aware computing is to become widespread. Although sensors could in theory be used to gather any number of contextual data points from users, such tracking is typically power hungry, hogging battery power from other user tasks. Software such as Consia could help ensure power efficient contextual sensing.

MEX and Qualcomm are collaborating on Pathway #14, entitled ‘Define techniques for context aware user experience‘, which will be a focal point of the next MEX event in September 2012.