Why?

Participants never act completely naturally in a lab setting, so consider testing your product in the ‘wild’. This can be particularly valuable when real-life disturbances are important for your design, as is the case with mobile apps.

How?

Recruit users and ask them to use your device for a period of time. In a field trial, you cannot easily adapt, so preparation is key. Make sure your prototype is robust enough to be used in the field. Make a detailed list of evaluation questions and think about how and when you can measure them (logs, questionnaires, interviews).

Ingredients

• A clear idea of what you want to learn from the test.
• A robust prototype.
• An evaluation plan.
• A user group willing to use your prototype (for a long period of time).

In practice

Field trials are particularly suitable for mobile and social solutions that are hard to test in the lab. A particular kind of field trial is a beta-test, which is common practice in the game industry for example.

Useful resources

• A good background read for field trials can be chapter 9 of Researching Information Systems and Computing (Oates, 2006) on experimental design p126-140.