Coventry University

The usability laboratory is situated in the Design Institute, Coventry School of Art and Design, Coventry University. The lab serves as a focus point in the university for studies of HCI, electronic learning resources, games usability, design process management, product evaluation and interactive/reactive media evaluation. By capturing the usability evaluation process we wish to give industrial designers a wider understanding of usability.

The lab will also be used for consultancy work as part of the facilities we offer to local businesses. In this capacity we intend to use the laboratory for prototype development and testing. We will be able to take an idea provided by local business from concept design, through approval and mock-ups and on-to usability testing. The products in question can range from small goods through to full-scale cars - where we can look at ergonomics and packaging.

In terms of personnel associated with the centre, we have two ergonomists from Industrial Design, usability expert, HCI specialist, educational technologist and more recently a research assistant who will specialize in games usability.

The laboratory consists of two rooms - an observation/recording room and the lab itself. The lab can either be configured as:

• a relaxed environment for the running of focus groups,
• a computer games testing area,
• a computer studio for the testing especially of e-learning materials, such as proprietary software to support distance learning or virtual communities (e.g. Web-CT and e-Studio), videos and animations produced as training/publicity material for the university,
• an open space for the testing of installation pieces (such as elements of a poly-sensory environment for autistic children),
• a design studio to test the way in which designers work, or
• a product testing environment.

We have a central microphone, two cameras which can focus on an area of the room, and a camera for handheld products. All items are controlled from the observation room where data can be collected and saved in a number of formats. Analysis methods include concept mapping, video coding and annotation (using The Observer), content analysis, questionnaires, etc.

	Observation room and test room, separated by a one-way mirror.
	Participant in action during a usability test of a computer game.
	E-learning. As a university we are interested in using e-learning or blende learning as a way of supporting our students, especially the distance learners, and also in setting up on -line communities. The lab is being used to evaluate content, presentation and functionality of web-CT and also e-studio.
	Focus group. In this image a meeting is being held with a group of designers to discuss a project brief relating to the Children's Olympics.
	Handheld products. We are able to do small product evaluation, in this case a mobile phone.
	Interactive media. The design and digital media studios develop reactive/interactive environments or installations. This photo shows Alex Woolner, the designer, testing out his design movement sensors - when you move around the space the colour of the space changes (later testing the whole room will change colour).

Recent projects include:

• Evaluation trials for the EU-IST project "UNITE". The project concerned the development of a ubiquitous and integrated network environment to support the needs of mobile workers. We evaluated the system in use in The Netherlands by means of a portable lab (which allowed us to simultaneously record sound, video, user actions and expressions). The results of the analysis were fed into the iterative design of the system.
• Investigation of programming as reflective practice. This was a small project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to take a design research approach to understanding programming, in particular to look at movement through the design space, to understand what programmers think about when they are immersed in a task. Five programmers were asked to provide a verbal stream of consciousness as they undertook a three-hour programming task. The sessions were recorded and transcribed. The Observer event recorder is used to pinpoint times of surprise and reflection that are at the heart of the investigation, and also to track how design ideas evolve. The research has shown that programming an be analyzed as reflective practice and that studying the process in this way is likely to reveal information about training and development needs as well as allow us to learn more about reflection-in-action.
• Coventry University is funding a small project to look at the use of e-Studio to support the postgraduate community in the School of Art and Design. Most of the students use a different system, WebCT, which has not proved too successful for supporting the more high level needs of postgraduate students. A 6-month project is being conducted involving around 30 students and their lecturers and supervisors. The system will be subjected to standard usability testing (SUMI), cost /benefit analysis and more qualitative assessments with user trials and walkthroughs. The latter will take place in the laboratory. Students involved in the investigation will benefit from first hand experience of testing each other, will start to understand what it is like to be participants in an investigation and help in determining whether such a system is actually needed.
• Evaluation of hand held products by Industrial Design students, for example mobile phones. For this a small camera was attached to the product and the investigator observed use of the product and recorded usage.
• A lot of the postgraduate students are design researchers, who develop methods to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the design process. The laboratory provides opportunities for the testing of such methods, and, if they are successful, such methods could be used in the lab.
• We are currently exploring the area of games usability and looking at ways in which we might use our current facilities for exploring aspects of usability not currently addressed by developers.