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

  • Authors:

  • Anne E. Bowser;Derek L. Hansen;Jocelyn Raphael;Matthew Reid;Ryan J. Gamett;Yurong R. He;Dana Rotman;Jenny J. Preece

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA;Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA;Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA;Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA;Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

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.