Example labs
Thirty one usability labs from all over the world, all recently built and in active use, take you on a photographic tour and show you how they designed their rooms, what equipment they use, and which software tools are used for data collection and analysis. The usability lab photo gallery covers a wide range of application domains, organizations and technology: from desktop software to mobile applications, from healthcare to military systems, from consumer electronics to office hardware, from focus groups and qualitative testing to physiological measurements and eye tracking, from corporate to educational facilities, from stationary to portable labs. Enjoy the tours!
TNO & Royal Netherlands Navy
In 1997, the Royal Netherlands Navy ordered four new Air Defence and Command Frigates (ADCFs), which were commissioned from 2001 to 2004. At the end of 2005, the Dutch navy and TNO Defence, Security, and Safety started an evaluation of the Ship Control Centre (SCC).
TNO Human Factors
The Usability Engineering group (UE) at TNO Human Factors develops and applies guidelines, methods and user interface concepts that guide the software development process to improve the task support, accessibility and ease of interaction.
Usability testing is an important instrument for systematically addressing the user and usage perspective during system (re)development. The UE group applies generic and customized methods, tools and facilities to apply cost-effective tests of software and services (web sites, mobile services, desktop applications) in different development stages. The usability tests are performed on location or in our Usability Lab.
Umeå University
The setting is designed to be as naturalistic as possible as a workplace. The fact that it is a usability lab is toned down as much as possible. It includes three work stations, one computer for the subject to be tested, one computer for storing and handling of the data received from the subject computer and finally an analysis computer, where The Observer Video-Pro is installed. One video camera is pointing towards the user and this video stream is sent directly to the storage computer. This video stream is mixed 'picture in picture' with the outgoing stream from the user's computer screen.
University Hospital of Lille - EVALAB
EVALAB is a usability lab devoted to usability engineering of New Information Technologies in Healthcare. It is located on the campus of the University Hospital of Lille, France.
For the tests run in the usability lab, a panel of participants in the project observe the entire test session: project manager, user representatives, designer of the application, technician in charge of the re-engineering process, and a usability engineer. The session is completely recorded, using 4 synchronized videotapes. After the session, a debriefing involving all the participants allows to identify which parts of the activity must be precisely analyzed. This analysis is then performed by the usability engineer. Relying on the 4 videotapes, tasks and events are then logged with The Observer Video-Pro.
University of British Columbia
The Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) is a University of British Columbia interdisciplinary research institute fostering a human-centered paradigm shift in emerging information technologies. Over 135 faculty members from Applied Science, Science, Commerce, Arts, Dentistry, Education, Forestry, Medicine, and Pharmacy collaborate within ICICS.
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.
IDEA Lab
The IDEA Lab is a teaching, research and consultancy facility of the University of Melbourne. It is a flexible state of the art usability lab and observation space. Situated a few minutes from Melbourne's central business district, the Lab is easily reached by various industry partners. In addition to viewing areas separated from four observation rooms by large one-way windows, the Lab's advanced equipment includes many movable wall mounted cameras and moving cameras, clear and powerful audio pick up, video mixing and multi-camera taping and PC screen capture to tape. Additional equipment is arranged for specific applications.
Used for many purposes including usability evaluation, participatory design and user needs analysis, this facility supports extensive research, teaching and consulting activities in the following primary areas:
University of Port Elizabeth
Our usability lab is one of the research facilities within the UPE Centre of Excellence. The laboratory is used to formally evaluate the usability of a wide variety of interactive systems.
The lab is outfitted with state of the art equipment supplied by Noldus Information Technology in December 2000. During a test, a recording is made of the user completing the required tasks and after the test, tasks and events are logged with The Observer Video-Pro. For presentations purposes, video highlights are produced as MPEG-1 clips. In quantitative studies, summary statistics (task completion times, error rates) are exported to Excel and next to Statistica for hypothesis testing.
University of Turku
Why we chose what we have? Well, we had a limited amount of money and we wanted to be able to carry out “traditional” usability tests of computer programs and mobile/PDA applications. So, we needed a video camera (conventional plus a wireless video camera), equipment for converting computer screen signal into video (scan converter), mixer for overlaying two video signals, a computer for storing the data and a program for analyzing the data.
Interactive Communication Lab
The user lab is equipped to perform multiplatform audits, such as PC's, Interactive TV, Mobile devices, Consoles, Information Points, Virtual Reality and Domotic Services to be evaluated.
During the test, tasks and events are logged. For presentations purpose, video highlights are produced as MPEG-1 clips. In quantitative studies, summary statistics (task completion times, error rates) are edited in Excel for hypothesis
testing.