A Framework for Personalized Multi-Device Information Communicating System Rohiza Ahmad, Rozana Kasbon, Eliza Mazmee Mazlan, and Aliza Sarlan Abstract—Due to the mobility of users, many information systems are now developed with the capability of supporting retrieval of information from both static and mobile users. Hence, the amount, content and format of the information retrieved will need to be tailored according to the device and the user who requested for it. Thus, this paper presents a framework for the design and implementation of such a system, which is to be developed for communicating final examination related information to the academic community at one university in Malaysia. The concept of personalization will be implemented in the system so that only highly relevant information will be delivered to the users. The personalization concept used will be based on user profiling as well as context. The system in its final state will be accessible through cell phones as well as intranet connected personal computers. Keywords—System framework, personalization, information communicating system, multi-device. I. INTRODUCTION N one university in Malaysia, at the end of every semester, two to three weeks of the academic calendar will be blocked for final examination exercise. The examination unit, which is responsible for handling all matters regarding the administration of the examinations, will be generating an examination schedule a few weeks before the actual examination period starts. The schedule, among others, contains the time, date and venue for each examination. Besides, staffs who are assigned as invigilators for each examination will also be identified in the schedule. Currently, this schedule is posted on the university website for viewing by students and staff. Other than the website, all staff will also be informed via e-mails of their invigilation duties. Few problems have been identified with the existing way of communicating the examination information. Firstly, the content of examination schedule posted is general for everyone. In other words, all information of all examinations is presented to a user, i.e., a student or a staff, even though some of the information are not relevant to him/her. Besides that, the information provided on the website is also fairly static. Even though an examination had been conducted, its information is still available on the website. This overloading of information makes it hard for users to see only the timely Authors are with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Tronoh Perak, Malaysia (e-mail: Rohiza_ahmad@petronas.com.my, rozank@petronas.com.my, elizamazmee@petronas.com.my, Aliza_sarlan@petronas.com.my). information related to them. As the website does not provide any means or functionalities for the users to filter the information, this leads to the possibility for some users to overlook the important information which are relevant to them. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear missing or late cases reported during the actual examination time. Secondly, the current system also has problems in communicating last minute changes of examination’s particulars such as the change of exam’s venue to users. The current way of communication is by manual mean to convey the changes to students and staff. Notices will be put on notice boards around the campus and emails and phone calls will be made to the relevant staff. Unfortunately, the above methods do not guarantee the information reaches all the intended users. Again a lot of problems can be expected to happen during the examination time. Thirdly, in relation to the first and the second problems, there is no proper reminder and/or alerting functionalities to the current system to alert the users of incoming related examinations as well as changes to the examination schedule. The manual reminders through email for invigilation duties to staff also posted problems to the person in-charged at the examination unit where reminders need to be sent manually a day earlier to the respective staff has become a tedious job. Hence, it is believed that a proper system would need to be built to cater for the above problems. The system proposed will implement the concept of personalization. The system allows students and staff to retrieve the examination schedule that is relevant to them either using desktop computers or from mobile devices. The information sent to them will be personalized and the amount sent will be based on the device that sends the request. Moreover, any changes to the schedule will be alerted to the related users immediately. The schedule shown on the university website will also be updated accordingly. Besides that, reminders will also be sent to users timely. In this paper an overview of the design of the system will be presented. Section II provides some related works, Section III presents the system’s development and implementation framework, Section IV describes the methodology and Section V concludes the paper. II. RELATED WORK Personalization is a concept which has been rigorously applied in many area of research such as web interaction, e- commerce and education. For web browsing, personalized I World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 62 2010 764