What is Field Laboratory

Evaluating mobile technologies “in the real world” is hard. It is challenging to capture key situations of use, hard to apply established techniques such as observation and “thinking aloud,” and it is complicated to collect data of an acceptable quality. In response to these challenges, a “field laboratory” has been developed for evaluating mobile technologies in situ. Facilitating high-quality data collection as well as unobstructed user interaction, the field laboratory allows a small wireless camera to be attached to a mobile device, capturing a close-up image of the screen and buttons. This chapter describes the iterative development of the field laboratory over 4 years of evaluating several mobile systems in field settings. It leads to a description of the current setup and how it is used, and explains the rationales for key decisions on technology and form factors made throughout its development.