The radical societal changes we are witnessing as a result of COVID-19 are giving rise to new challenges and new opportunities for pervasive computing and its researchers. Social distancing measures are making it harder to conduct lab-based user studies and in-person observations. Pervasive computing researchers are now faced with the challenge of designing and conducting controlled user studies remotely, but at the same time pervasive computing is becoming crucial at enabling remote research in a wide range of disciplines and application domains, including but not limited to, education, health, housing, transportation, work, and entertainment.

In this special issue, we seek to catalyze new research in pervasive computing outside the lab. Of particular interest are technologies and methods for conducting research with limited, remote, or no access to users. The guest editors invite original and high-quality submissions addressing any aspect of this field, as long as the connection to pervasive computing is clear and central to the paper. Review or summary articles—for example, critical evaluations of the state of the art or an insightful analysis of established and upcoming technologies—may be accepted if they demonstrate academic rigor and relevance. 

Example topics include:

• Methods, techniques, and technologies for conducting user studies outside the lab
• Pervasive technologies for remote data collection
• Cases studies and lessons learned from large-scale rollout of technologies
• Conducting user-centered research in the COVID-19 era
• Evaluation without users
• Pervasive computing in education, health, housing, transportation, work, and entertainment
• Security and privacy issues in pervasive computing deployments
• Human interaction with the edge
• New business models to support large-scale rollout of pervasive technologies

Submission Guidelines

Please read the Author Guidelines here. Articles submitted to IEEE Pervasive Computing should not exceed 6,000 words, including all text, abstract, keywords, bibliography, biographies, and table text. The word count must include 250 words for each table and figure. References should be limited to at most 20 citations (40 for survey papers). Authors are encouraged, but not required, to use a template for submission (accepted articles will ultimately be typeset by magazine staff for publication).

In addition, for this special issue, we invite submissions of 300-word case studies. These should describe timely projects, systems, and activities that are relevant to this special issue. Case studies should describe the motivation and objectives of the work, highlight the deployment characteristics, and summarize any preliminary findings or results if available. We are happy to receive case studies for ongoing work.  The accepted case studies will be curated and combined into a single report that will be published in this special issue. Case studies should be submitted using the same process as abstracts, and they should include an in-text reference or link that provides more information about the case study or project.

Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. When you are ready to submit, please go to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pc-cs.

Tentative Timeline

Guest Editors

Contact the guest editors at pvc1-2022@computer.org.

• Florian Alt (Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany)
• Vassilis Kostakos (University of Melbourne, Australia)
• Nuria Oliver (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, Spain)