An intelligent system for contextual notifications solution

Abstract: Handsets have experienced a tremendous growth over the past few years, with users have more and more options in applications. The push notification has replaced the email grown in importance as a new bridge for application service provider to engage with users. The essential purpose of push notifications is to enable an app to inform its users that it has something for them when the app is not running in the foreground. For example, a message or an upcoming appointment [1]. However, in practice, the notification channel would get flooded by commercials regardless of which platform that was used. Aimless push notifications would only result in pushing the users away from the applications. This leads to the rise of the concept of contextual notifications, sending notifications at the right place, right time, regarding the right piece of information to the targeted audience. The concept of contextual notifications is not entirely new, yet the power of contextual notifications has not been fully developed, especially for video on demand applications. By sending more personal, contextual noti-fications to the user, it could prevent users from not opening the application or even deleting the application. Moreover, since users nowadays are used to having a large range of options in browsing videos over different platforms as well, contextual notifications for cross platforms are also of interest. Users can use their companion mobile devices to interact with the video that is being played on the first screen, even the two devices are different platforms, the companion device still can receive the relative contextual notification about the video on the first screen. The thesis work presents the result of the exploratory study and design development, then a discussion and conclusion will is presented based on the result. The development consists of three main parts. First of all, a high-level design and a framework are proposed based on pre-study of Accedo Appgrid product and the other existing system. Secondly, an implementation on proof of concept of contextual notifications server is performed. Thirdly, a demonstration application is implemented in order to test the proof of concept contextual notification server. In the end, the functional evaluation is presented and a conclusion can be made that the contextual notification solution is achievable.