HBMA: An Architectural Pattern for Providing People's Information from their Companion Devices

ABSTRACT Background People are emerging as the center of software development in smart environments. An increasing number of applications use personal information to offer personalized content. However, there is no consensus on how these applications should be developed, making it difficult for developers to rely on existing designs and implementation guidelines. Objective This paper presents Human‐Based Microservices Architecture (HBMA), an architectural pattern intended to provide reusable guidelines for developing human‐centered applications. Methods The proposed pattern was designed through an analysis of existing reference architectures and systems. Its applicability was examined through representative applications and an initial performance assessment. Results The evaluation provides initial evidence of the pattern's applicability while identifying limitations that should be addressed in future work. Conclusions HBMA provides developers with reusable architectural guidelines for designing human‐centered applications in which people's information is locally managed and selectively exposed as services.