Poster for HCIL symposium 2012

1. Low-fidelity prototyping for location-based
social games
Anne Bowser, Derek Hansen, Yurong He, Dana Rotman, Jenny Preece
1 Prototyping 3 Activities
The PLACE Approach:
Prototyping Location, Activities, & Collective PLACE considers prototyping for
Experience activities, user motivations, and
game dynamics more important
Designers who prototype mobile games and applications than prototyping for an interface.
are challenged by both the physical constraints of a mobile
device and the necessity of representing complex factors Sessions begin by users
like location, social experience, the context of use, different completing a simple, prescribed
scenarios or activates, and use over time. activity to demonstrate the
Wizard of application. Next, users are
Field Pointer Website PLACE is an approach to low-
Oz given “free time” to complete
fidelity prototyping for location- activities they choose from a list.
In the PLACE approach, field pointers are connected to physical based social games and apps This process provides
objects. Using a standard QR code reader on a mobile device, that offers a systematic researchers with data about
users are directed to web content that mimicks application framework for addressing these which activities are worth
functionality. We use a Wordpress site, but any easy to use concerns. PLACE combines a including in future iterations and
content management system would work. Additional classic approach to prototyping makes the experience more fun
functionality such as awarding badges for completed activities is with a consideration of location, for participants. It also helps
handled using a traditional Wizard of Oz methodology. The activities, time, and the users generate new activities
PLACE approach extends previous work on in situ prototyping3. collective experience of play. and enhance existing ones.
2 Location
We are currently using the 4 Collective Experience
PLACE approach to prototype
Floracaching, a citizens
science game that utilizes
crowd sourcing to gather plant
phenology data and data for
the Encyclopedia of Life1,2.
The PLACE approach should be scaled.
Initial sessions are run for 1-2 hours with a short list of
activities and set number of participants in a small
geographic space. Initial findings inform later sessions
that are conducted at a larger scale. For example, we are
currently conducting a week-long session that spans a
In order to authentically represent location-based
college campus and encourages participants to join at
experience, users must move in the physical world. The
any point in time.
PLACE approach condenses location to different scales. Social experience is key to many location-based games and
Initial tests are performed in a smaller space such as three References
1) Bowser, A., Hansen, D., Rotman, D. & Preece, J. (2012). Low-fidelity prototyping for social, location-based game apps.
activities. PLACE does not encourage testing users in
floors of a building. Later iterations expand the space to a In Proc. of CSCW '12 Workshop on Mixed-Reality Games. New York, NY: ACM Press.
2) Graham, E., Vassallo, D., Gerrick, S., Han, K., Kang, J. & Hsieh, N. (2012). Challenges of mobile phone-based, GPS-
isolation; rather, groups of 7-12 participants interact with
larger scale, such as a college campus. dependent gaming for citizen science. In Proc. of CSCW '12 Workshop on Mixed-Reality Games. New York, NY: ACM
Press.
one another in group sessions. Participants with existing
3) de Sa, M., & Carrico, L. (2009). A mobile tool for in situ prototyping. In Proc. of MobileHCI '09. New York, NY: ACM
Press.
relationships are encouraged
PLACE offers a solution to unique challenges of 4) Li, Y., Hong, J., & Landay, J. (2004). Topiary: A tool for prototyping location-enhanced applications. In Proc. of UIST
'04. New York, NY: ACM Press.
to play together.
prototyping location such as modeling location context
and representing complex interaction sequences4.
University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Lab www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
NSF Award SES 0968546