A Visual Environment for End-User Creation of IoT Customization Rules with Recommendation Support

Abstract

Personalization rules based on the trigger-action paradigm have recently garnered increasing interest in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, composing trigger-action rules can be a challenging task for end users, especially when the rules' complexity increases. Users have to decide about various aspects: which triggers and actions to select, how to combine multiple triggers or actions, and whether some previously defined rule can help in the composition process. We propose a visual environment, Block Rule Composer, to address these problems. It consists of a tool for creating rules based on visual blocks, integrated with recommendation techniques in order to provide intelligent support during rule creation. We also report on a first test which provided positive indications and suggestions for further design improvements.