• What methodologies would you propose given a 2 month timeline for giving the development team specific recommendations?
• What would you do with a) a budget of $2,000? What would you do with a budget of $20,000? You should assume a team of 2 researchers (whose salary are covered outside of the budget).
• Finally, this is a global product. How would you address the issue of creating a product with global appeal? You can assume that the biggest markets are in Germany, France, the US, and India.  

Abstract

We are designing a location-based multi-player mobile game that aims to bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds.  To this end, the game is embedded in the user's life to be played at different locations, times, and collaborate with other players.  We would like to hear ideas and suggestions on how to conduct our first user testing.  The mobile game is to be tested in its context which is any place that users can play mobile games such the street or at home.  One major limitation is not having access to the comfort of a conventional user-testing lab.

1. The game is ongoing and is played in short bursts over a long period of time (a few days +). Users are encouraged to play the game at their own will during those times of the day that fits them the most.

2. The game uses mobile GPS and location-awareness capabilities. For the game to take place users will play at different physical locations. We have identified different situations in which our users will play our game such as walking on the street, waiting on line for quick coffee, in-class, or at home.

3. To accomplish some goals users need to interact and collaborate with each other. These are quick interactions that can occur casually when two users meet physically. The implications these constraints have on users makes it difficult for observers to conduct user testing on a conventional manner. Because the game is multi-player users will be playing simultaneously in different places, and at different times of the day. Making difficult for us to be there and register every user interaction with our product.

We will install the game in the users mobile phones along with some instructions and allow them to play it for 4 or 5 days.

Let’s get some discussion going right here:

- How can we collect user feedback in a reliable way without observing our users? What are current field methods used in the mobile world?

- How can we capture contextual information on the situations users play the game and the features they choose to play?

- Having users annotate their thoughts/comments on a form on a daily basis versus recalling all thoughts at the end of the experience?

• What are your thoughts and ideas for creating novel interactive scenarios that demonstrate the beneficial effects of binaural hearing?
• How are they strongly guided by usability principles?  
• Compare your scenario ideas that will provide a richer, immersive binaural experience for a user  to current sound-stimuli focused approaches. 
• Will your scenario produce better research data?  Why?  What do you expect to learn? 
• Who can take these ideas and springboard off of them to another scenario or a better user experience?
• What would you like to share with us that we didn’t know to ask?