Lessons learned from large-scale user studies: Using android market as a source of data

Abstract

User studies with mobile devices have typically been cumbersome, since researchers have had to recruit participants, hand out or configure devices, and offer incentives and rewards. The increasing popularity of application stores has allowed researchers to use such mechanisms to recruit participants and conduct large-scale studies in authentic settings with relatively little effort. Most researchers who use application stores do not consider the side-effects or biases that such an approachmay introduce. The authors summarize priorwork that has reported experiences from using application stores as a recruiting, distribution and study mechanism, and also present a case study of a 4-week long s..