Naturalistic enactment to stimulate user experience for the evaluation of a mobile elderly care application

We describe the use of a technique aimed at allowing users to realistically experience novel mobile applications in a naturalistic environment as part of the formative evaluation of the system. This technique, that we have named naturalistic enactment, is appropriate for application scenarios that are not easily replicated in a laboratory setting and might cause risks to users or other stakeholders if used at a prototyping stage, as is often the case in the healthcare domain. We present and discuss the use of this technique after the recent introduction of a mobile application aimed at assisting geriatric nurses in attending emergency calls. The technique provided nurses with the experience of operating the mobile application in a naturalistic environment (e.g., high ecological validity), thus allowing them to identify adoption issues that they would have missed otherwise.