Defining and Investigating Device Comfort

Device Comfort is a concept that uses an enhanced notion of trust to allow a personal (likely mobile) device to better reason about the state of interactions and actions between it, its owner, and the environment. This includes allowing a better understanding of how to manage information in fine-grained context as well as addressing the personal security of the user. To do this, it forms a unique relationship with the user, focusing on the device's judgment of user in context. This paper introduces and defines Device Comfort, including an examination of what makes up the comfort of a device in terms of trust and other considerations, and discusses the uses of such an approach. It also presents some ongoing developmental work in the concept, and an initial formal model of Device Comfort, its makeup and behaviour.