Rewarding Presence through Location-Based Media: 

In anticipation of their latest album release, artists Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx decided to reward their loyal fans with a sneak preview. However, there was a catch; the record could only be streamed via mobile phone and while present at specific physical locations.

Location-based mobile marketing will play a prominent role in Debenhams' digital strategy in 2011. 

The high street department store said it will increase its use of mobile vouchers this year and explore ways to send out instant, topical messages to its customers. 

88% of UK consumers ignore ads on their mobiles and 36% automatically delete them, while just 9% take any further action after viewing a mobile ad.

At its core, usability testing is fairly simple: developers bring people in to play their game, and then talk to them about their experiences. Increasingly, however, researchers are trying to look into the player’s head a little more directly. Vertical Slice is one of the pioneers of the biometric approach, using diagnostic tools to dig deeper into user responses. “You’ve got an emotional spectrum,” explains McAllister. “Think of it as a graph, with arousal – positive and negative excitement – on the Y axis, and then mood – happiness and sadness – on the X. Arousal can be measured by galvanic skin response, which we do by placing sensors on players’ fingers, while we measure overall skin temperature to give us valance – whether a player is happy or sad. This is all still research, but we’re already seeing, for example, skin temperature decreasing and an increase in galvanic skin response during combat in good FPS games – they seem to be aroused and happy.”