Key Properties in the Development of Smart Spaces

This paper is targeted at improving and expanding the understanding of the Smart Spaces concept of by the R&D community. Through the identification of key properties based on an analysis of evolving trends in the mobile industry, the developers are provided with recommendations that improve the adoption of Smart Spaces. It is especially important to understand how Smart Spaces can change the whole services ecosystem and the role that mobile devices will play.

The paper discusses some core technologies being developed in the industry that might play a dominant role in the future Smart Spaces. A special attention of the discussion is the latest trend towards a networked inter-device architecture for mobile devices and what new possibilities it opens. With that the discussion expands into general properties of Smart Spaces. The paper summarizes functional and non-functional properties. By understanding the properties and their implications to the development and adoption of Smart Spaces, the developers are better equipped to ensure that the needs of the various stakeholders are taken into account. For this purpose, the paper proposes a set of questions that can be used to estimate how well the planned Smart Space fares when compared against each of the properties.