Café tests in George Town and the permission sheet

We still use the Level 8 studio for silent replays. For recruiting, we often sit in cafés near Armenian Street, where a person can refuse without feeling trapped in our office. The sound matters. A location prompt that feels easy in a carpeted meeting room feels different when the person is holding a bag and a drink.

Last year a food-court sitting showed us a pattern we had missed on headphones: people accepted a microphone permission because they thought it belonged to the café’s own ordering speaker. The label had not named our app. The system sheet named a bundle identifier nobody reads. We asked the team to put the app’s shop name in the pre-prompt, in Bahasa Melayu and English, before the system sheet appeared.

Café tests are not theatre. We still record with consent, still pay the participant, and still stop if the person wants to leave. The café is a setting, not a gimmick.