Play and learn about your learners to early form your TEL design

TERENCE is an FP7 ICT European project that developed a technology enhanced learning system for supporting its learners, who are primary school children, and their educators. In the course of the project, we run field studies with a large number of learners for analysing the context of use of the system. This paper explains what triggered the gamification of the field studies, as well as how the field studies were conducted. It then explains how the gamified field studies were used to inform the early design of the TERENCE system. This paper ends by rummaging over the pros and contras of gamifying field studies as in TERENCE.