Moving HCI Outdoors: Lessons Learned from Conducting Research in the Wild
Researchers are increasingly adopting ‘research in the wild’ approaches to design and evaluate prototypes in public spaces and to understand how city dwellers interact with them. Although ‘in the wild’ studies can provide more ecologically valid findings
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Abstract Researchers are increasingly adopting ‘research in the wild’ approaches to design and evaluate prototypes in public spaces and to understand how city dwellers interact with them. Although ‘in the wild’ studies can provide more ecologically valid findings compared with typical performance measures collected in the lab, there are challenges associated with designing for and deploying in emergent contexts. A huge amount of work is involved, especially navigating the range of pragmatic and logistical concerns that inevitably arise. It is messy, expensive, time consuming, and unpredictable where often things don’t go according to plan. However, such practicalities are rarely discussed in published studies. The importance of the ‘behind the scenes’ work in making research in the wild happen should not be underestimated. In this chapter, we focus on three case studies where technology prototypes were evaluated in the wild. These are discussed in terms of: technology and design, space and place, social factors, and sustainability. Finally, we provide a set of practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners in the field.
1 Introduction Research in the wild (RITW) is considered as an umbrella term to refer to how, what, and where research is conducted in naturalistic settings (Rogers and Marshall 2017). An underlying goal is to understand how technology (custom built and offthe-shelf) is and can be used in the everyday/real world, in order to gain new insights M. Balestrini (B) Ideas for Change, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] S. Gallacher Arup, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] Y. Rogers University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. McCrickard et al. (eds.), HCI Outdoors: Theory, Design, Methods and Applications, Human–Computer Interaction Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45289-6_4
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about: how to engage people/communities in various activities, how people’s lives are impacted by a specific technology, and what people do when encountering a new technology in a given setting. The output from such research is used to develop new understandings, theories, or concepts about human behaviour in the real world. RITW is increasingly conducted outdoors, especially in urban settings, with the aim of investigating how they may support and extend a range of user experiences, including playfulness (Müller et al. 2009), reflection (Johnson et al. 2012), and social interactions (Brignull and Rogers 2003; Fischer and Hornecker 2012). Problems addressed are equally diverse, including loneliness amongst city inhabitants, impact of tourism on the environment, and discerning what divides and concerns a community (Koeman et al. 2015). However, designing technology to address these problems in urban contexts is complex in ways that cannot be predicted or controlled for. There are many aspects that need to be taken into account. Sometimes, the problems being addressed are referred to as b
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