Pervasive gaming design and evaluation: a literature review

A very nifty document on the iperg website (do not pay attention to the crappy flash interface): "Literature Review, Design and Evaluation Methods for Pervasive Games", February 2005. Edited by Steve Benford and Mauricio Capra, The University of Nottingham Contributors:University of Nottingham: Steve Benford, Mauricio Capra, Martin Flintham, Andy Crabtree, Adam Drozd, Leif Oppermann Fraunhofer Institute: Uta Pankoke-Babatz Interactive Institute: Staffan BjörkSwedish Institute of Computer Science: Annika Waern University of Tampere: Laura Ermi, Anu Jäppinen, Markus Montola.

This review identifies and describes the key design and evaluation techniques to be used in IPerG. It summarises key previous work from the field; clarifies the challenges involved in using these techniques for pervasive games and in IPerG in general and also clarifies the mapping of techniques to showcases. The review is intended to act as a resource to be used across IPerG, especially within the different showcases, and then eventually outside of IPerG, providing a resource for the pervasive game development community at large. The following design methods are reviewed: participatory design, scenario based design, ethnographic field studies of current games, cultural probes, game design patterns, game space and artefacts, player game presence, public performance as a research method, and ethical aspects. The following evaluation methods are reviewed: cognitive walkthrough, questionnaires, ethnography of trials with prototypes laboratory experiments and critical review. These methods will be used in different IPerG showcases, providing a broad experience of design and evaluation methods across the project.

Of course this document came out one year after I was struggling finding such kind information ;) But here it is, this EU project deliverable is a nice account of pervasive gaming evaluation methodologies.

Among all those methods, I would just point that there is a lack concerning interaction analysis, since collaboration is an important issue in pervasive computing. I would also add sequantial analysis and some concrete datamining like the ones I described previously today.