Since 1977, I've spent hundreds of hours testing in academic and professional
laboratories .
Along the way, I've noticed many issues in lab design that impact their usefulness
and effectiveness.
Usability
Laboratory Specifications
Issue addressed
"We'd like to equip ourselves to do some usability work on our own. What sort of setup do we really need?”
Your challenge
Most companies understand that the effective use of usability and User-Centered Design methods in their projects pays great dividends in building easy-to-use and effective products.
Perhaps you're thinking of equipping yourself to do some usability lab testing on your own (I can even train your staff to do a pretty good job), but you aren't sure what you really need to have a useful lab.
Just like successful software design, the key to building an effective lab is identifying your requirements, not wiring together exotic technology that will be unnecessarily complicated or will produce heaps of information that no one will ever use. Don't make the mistake of having your lab designed by an audiovisual technician who can build great broadcast studios, but hasn't worked in a usability lab environment.
I help you identify your requirements and then I develop the most effective solution for your needs and budget. I pay attention to the solution's ease-of-use, expandability, configurability, and integration to your information systems. Even with today's technology, there are still issues regarding recording quality and efficiency of data analysis that should be carefully considered. When required, I retain a professional audiovisual specialist to ensure the system is optimized for recording quality.
Some considerations for you own set-up may include:
- Digital vs analog tape vs direct-to-disk software compression
- Multiple real-time recording
- Video mixing of multiple sources
- Time stamping recording
- Is a live observation area required?
- Multiple cameras/audio feeds
- Two way audio requirements
- Noise, lighting and ventilation requirements
- Physical lab layout
- Remote-control capability
- Wireless AV solutions
- Data logging requirements
- Specialized real-time data annotation
- Post-session analysis requirements
- Post-session editing/production requirements
- Portability requirements
- Multiple workstation requirements
- Remote capability
Since 1977, I've lived my academic and professional lives in several psychology labs, usability labs, and decision support centers used for user-centered design activities. I've designed and built several fixed-room labs, set up lab environments in focus group facilities, at client sites, and even in flying helicopters. I've reviewed lab specs and layouts from several usability labs. I've kept up-to-date on emerging technologies that can be used to make usability labs more effective.
Along the way, I've suffered through ineffective configurations that cost a lot of money!
Last update: May 07, 2002
(c) 2002 Don Hameluck Usability Consulting Inc.
