Services in Context

The paper gives an overview of a recently started research project addressing the question: Can context be exploited to add value to IT-services? Beyond today's way-finding services based on GPS and maps, we believe there is a new class of context-aware pervasive services making good use of a broad range of context information (e.g. identity, time of day, temperature, history as well as relative location of friends and belongings). Last but not least we believe one can find ways of adding value to IT-services by using disembodied conversational agents based on voice, sounds and visual signals integrated into the environment, instead of being guided by explicit directions shown on a display. The project aims at giving both new fundamental insight about the theory behind IT-services, their architecture and user interfaces and at building a number of prototypes demonstrating innovative context-aware pervasive IT-services.