Mobile services and games

Mobile services and applications present their own unique challenges both in terms of enabling technology and in terms of interaction logic. On the technology side, SICS approach has been for a long time that mobile devices will need to become “natively Internet capable”. In other words, we should not need to translate between protocols in order to communicate with mobile devices. Instead, basic Internet protocols and architectures should be extended to cope with mobile devices and services. Currently, SICS is working towards this vision by leading or participating in a number of large Swedish and European research projects.

Concerning interaction logic, SICS approach has been to focus on services that are “truly mobile” in the sense that they are not extensions of stationary applications, such as mail. Instead, they were “born” with a mobile user scenario in mind, e.g. navigation services. Within this domain SICS is investigating research issues such as interface design, privacy, use of context information, collaboration between peers, and much more.

One type of mobile applications that SICS has been focusing a great deal on over the last few years is pervasive games. These are games that not only can be played on mobile devices, but for which the surrounding environment has a role to play. In other wors, the context in which the game is played directly affects and becomes part of the game. SICS is the coordinator of a large European project on pervasive gaming: IPerG.

More information
Interaction Laboratory
Interactive Collaborative Environments Laboratory
IPerG project