Context-awareness is becoming an essential functionality of mobile applications. However, it remains challenging to capture the contextual experience in innovation research, since early-stage technologies have not reached maturity to be implemented in a real-life context. Moreover, users have difficulty in evaluating implicit interactions with context-aware interfaces since imagination of users is limited. Assuming that context impacts user experience, virtual reality (VR) provides an untapped potential for the domain of innovation research. The aim of this study (in progress) is to investigate the potential of user tests in virtual reality (here virtual retail store) for human-computer interaction to better match the needs of users and designers. Initially, the mock-up has been implemented in a retail store with its context-awareness being simulated using the Wizard of Oz methodology (N = 18). This approach is found to be time-consuming and not sufficient for evaluating radical context-aware innovations
