Prototyping in PLACE: a scalable approach to developing location-based apps and games

The rising popularity of location-based applications and games (LBAGs) that break spatial, temporal, and social boundaries creates new challenges for designers. This paper introduces PLACE, an iterative, mixed-fidelity approach to Prototyping Location, Activities, Collective experience, and Experience over time in LBAGs. PLACE consists of 6 design principles: start small and scale up the fidelity, treat participants as co-designers, test in a representative space, focus on activities more than interfaces, respect authentic social experience, and represent time authentically. The effectiveness of PLACE was evaluated by prototyping Floracaching, a geocaching game for citizen science. This revealed the types of insights that PLACE provides, best practices for implementing PLACE, and how PLACE com-pares to other prototyping methods.

[1]  Bill Verplank,et al.  Actors, hairdos & videotape—informance design , 1994, CHI Conference Companion.

[2]  Paul Coulton,et al.  Enabling emergent behaviour in location based games , 2010, MindTrek.

[3]  Perttu Hämäläinen,et al.  Wizard of Oz prototyping of computer vision based action games for children , 2004, IDC '04.

[4]  Nicola J. Bidwell,et al.  Battleship by foot: learning by designing a mixed reality game , 2006 .

[5]  Abigail Sellen,et al.  Getting the right design and the design right , 2006, CHI.

[6]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Iterative user-interface design , 1993, Computer.

[7]  David R. Flatla,et al.  Calibration games: making calibration tasks enjoyable by adding motivating game elements , 2011, UIST.

[8]  Stephanie Rosenbaum,et al.  Focus groups in HCI: wealth of information or waste of resources? , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[9]  Karen Holtzblatt,et al.  Contextual design , 1997, INTR.

[10]  Kenton O'Hara,et al.  Understanding geocaching practices and motivations , 2008, CHI.

[11]  Christoph Schlieder,et al.  Designing location-based mobile games with a purpose: collecting geospatial data with CityExplorer , 2008, ACE '08.

[12]  Jane Fulton Suri,et al.  Experience prototyping , 2000, DIS '00.

[13]  Kenneth R. Stern,et al.  Low vs. high-fidelity prototyping debate , 1996, INTR.

[14]  Guy Pyrzak,et al.  Breaking the fidelity barrier: an examination of our current characterization of prototypes and an example of a mixed-fidelity success , 2006, CHI.

[15]  Colin Potts,et al.  Design of Everyday Things , 1988 .

[16]  Allison Druin,et al.  The role of children in the design of new technology , 2002 .

[17]  Riku Suomela,et al.  Using prototypes in early pervasive game development , 2007, Sandbox '07.

[18]  Mika Raento,et al.  ContextPhone: a prototyping platform for context-aware mobile applications , 2005, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[19]  Paul Coulton,et al.  PAC-LAN: mixed-reality gaming with RFID-enabled mobile phones , 2006, CIE.

[20]  Luís Carriço,et al.  Lessons from early stages design of mobile applications , 2008, Mobile HCI.

[21]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  Dynamic changes in motivation in collaborative citizen-science projects , 2012, CSCW.

[22]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[23]  Yang Li,et al.  Activity-based prototyping of ubicomp applications for long-lived, everyday human activities , 2008, CHI.

[24]  James A. Landay,et al.  MyExperience: a system for in situ tracing and capturing of user feedback on mobile phones , 2007, MobiSys '07.

[25]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems , 1996, CSCW '96.

[26]  Austin Henderson,et al.  Interaction design: beyond human-computer interaction , 2002, UBIQ.

[27]  Antti Oulasvirta,et al.  Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming , 2003, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[28]  Ilpo Koskinen,et al.  Prototyping Social Interaction , 2008, Design Issues.

[29]  N. Hoffart.  Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory , 2000 .

[30]  Noel Enyedy,et al.  Activity centered design: towards a theoretical framework for CSCL , 1999, CSCL.

[31]  Steve Benford,et al.  From interaction to trajectories: designing coherent journeys through user experiences , 2009, CHI.

[32]  Jakob E. Bardram,et al.  Supporting Human Activities - Exploring Activity-Centered Computing , 2002, UbiComp.

[33]  Connor Graham,et al.  A Review of Mobile HCI Research Methods , 2003, Mobile HCI.