Situational Computing

Situational Computing is an emerging computing paradigm where the notion of a "software application" — the key value driver for decades — gets relegated to a secondary role in favor of a new concept, the "situation". In Application-centric computing, the user interacts with an application for some features (e.g. a word processor), with another one for other features (e.g. chat with people) and so on. Each application is a standalone feature-provider. The user adapts to the application, in terms that he/she has to choose the right application that serves his/her purpose. In Situation-centric computing the user interacts with an electronically augmented situation, that provides certain situation-specific capabilities, and that was composed (often dynamically) based on the real-world situation that the user currently is in. As a user's situation changes, the electronic augmentation of the then-current situation changes (often automatically).

A situation is simply what you see when you open your eyes. It's you, your environment, what you can do and what's going on. More formally: "A situation is the combination of people, things, information and capabilities that, together, have relevance to the user at a certain moment in time."

A Situational Software is a software that provides the electronic augmentation to the user's situation in (near) real-time as soon as the situation itself evolves.

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