Centre for Usability Research

The Usability Lab of the Centre for Usability Research (CUO) is located at the Mediacentrum, which is part of the faculty of Social Sciences of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. CUO is specialized in the evaluation of products, services and applications on their user friendliness and in the design of user interfaces. CUO takes into consideration the whole path from accessibility, utility, usability to likeability. The user always plays a central role in each phase of the development and evaluation process.

For this research CUO disposes of some unique usability labs that can be used in a controlled environment or in the natural environment of the user. CUO is one of the research groups in IBBT, the Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology, a research institute founded by the Flemish Government, focusing on information & communication technology (ICT) in general, and applications of broadband technology in particular.

The control room.

The stationary usability lab of CUO mimics a living room, where a television set and a home computer are available to the test users. Most of the research focuses on the usability, sociability and/or playability of home appliances like interactive television, gaming and community applications. By separating the computer from the living room, it can also be used to test innovative office applications.

The test computer.

Centre for Usability Research
Department of Communication Science
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
E. Van Evenstraat 2a
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium
http://soc.kuleuven.be/com/mediac/cuo/index.php