Enabling mobile user modeling: infrastructure for personalization in ubiquitous computing

Mobile computing poses a big challenge to user modeling -- how to provide users with personalized services anywhere and anytime, without requiring the user to bootstrap a user model (UM) from scratch every time. The basic, abstract challenge is to maintain an up to date UM. Today's technology provides solutions to this abstract challenge -- the UM may be stored in the cloud or on the user's mobile device (or even both). However, the devil is in the details -- how can the environment or service provider access the UM and get the needed information from the model? How can the UM (or the user-modeling component) respond to continuous requests for personal data required by services in ubiquitous computing? This paper presents the idea and work in progress of "Mobile Info-Beads User Model" -- an extension of the "Info-Beads User Modeling approach" to the mobile world, where user-modeling components are exchanged and composed for providing the current service with the personal data needed for personalization. When such approach is adopted, it paves the way for dynamic construction of UMs, as needed, when needed, hence providing the infrastructure needed for adapting and extending UMs "on the fly" for personalized ubiquitous computing applications.