User research in the MGUIDE project can be divided into the following stages:
- Requirements Gathering and specification: A prototype system was constructed based on recommendations from the literature on animated agents. The prototype was evaluated in the actual castle of Monemvasia with a number of participants. You can find more details here. The lessons learned were presented during the M.Phil presentation and influenced the design of the final five (5) prototypes.
- Design and Prototypes: Based on requirements gathered from the pilot in the castle of Monemvasia, five(5) prototypes were developed. A number of novelties were achieved during the developed of the prototypes (e.g., an algorithm for natural language understanding, the design of Talos – a toolkit for system prototyping and research, and others). Although the initial idea was to continue the evaluation in the castle, due to lack of resources and time it was decided to simulate the conditions in the lab. There is an on-going debate on whether mobile applications should be tested in labs or fields. For instance, in 2009 70% of the developed systems were evaluated under lab conditions using a variety of techniques.
- Evaluation: The evaluation carried out in Greece and the UK, followed the same setup. I used detailed panoramic photography and high definition video-clips to represent in high detailed all locations and attractions of the castle. The lab was a simple room in which each user participated individually. In general the approach was successful, as participants could follow the same routes and watch the same presentations about the locations of the castle, from the comfort of their chair.
Examples of the panoramas used in the evaluations is shown below:
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