Wageningen, 14 November 2004 – After months of design, engineering, integration and testing, Noldus Information Technology completed the hardware and software infrastructure of the new LUTIN Usability Lab in La Villette, the main French science park, in Paris. The grand opening of the lab took place during a special symposium for 150 guests on 29 September, with the ceremonial inauguration of the lab by François d’Aubert, the French vice-minister of research.

LUTIN (“Laboratoire des Usages en Technologies d'Information Numériques”) resorts under the CNRS, the French council for scientific research, and is directed by Dominique Boullier, professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne. The LUTIN User Lab has primarily been designed as a facility for companies who wish to evaluate the usability of products, services and digital media, including PDAs, mobile phones and web sites. The lab provides both inside and outside testing through a versatile technical infrastructure solution which can be adapted to many different test requirements. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. Boullier (right) presents the LUTIN lab to Mr. d’Aubert (left).

In September 2003, Noldus Information Technology was selected as the technology partner to design and implement an integrated hardware and software solution for this complex environment. As Dimitri Gerebtzoff, who coordinated the project on behalf of Noldus, puts it “It was quite a challenge, but we got the job done. The result is a highly advanced and truly multimodal test facility, providing seamless integration of digital video, audio and screen capture technologies.” The lab has five rooms for individual or collective testing, each equipped with dome and professional video cameras, various wireless cameras, as well as systems for EEG measurement and eye tracking. Because verbal interaction between participants or comments and questions must be recorded, highly sensitive microphones have been integrated in each test room. Since many usability tests concern software or web pages, lossless digital screen capture technology is used to capture the test computer’s screen and synchronize it with the audio and video signals. 

Control of all signals recorded in the laboratory is managed through two main computers. Powered by The Observer Video-Pro software, these two stations can independently control all cameras, audio signals and test computers. Cameras, microphones and computer signals can be moved freely from a room to another to accommodate new test scenarios and measurement protocols. A technician can thus control the cameras, record the desired video signals and the communication between users in the test room, or between users and test leader. He can also preview the screen of the test computer or take control of the test computers. In each test room, loudspeakers allow the technician to interact with the users. The main advantage of having two stations with The Observer Video-Pro is the possibility to manage two different tests simultaneously. However, it also allows one to focus on a complex test through two different points of view. Besides the five fixed test rooms, a portable lab has also been included in the LUTIN environment to allow home or outdoor testing. The information gathered can then be analyzed in the main laboratory with The Observer Video-Pro. 

 

 

  

A view inside the usability lab’s control room, showing equipment for data collection. From left to right: computer with The Observer software, monitor displaying a screen capture of the test PC along with two camera views, microphone for the test leader, camera control unit, and monitors showing preview and recording views.

Besides being at the center of all hardware in the lab, the main purpose of The Observer software is to allow the researcher to code relevant user tasks and behaviors as time-stamped events via a user-defined coding scheme. As all data is recorded, the researcher can later review the video of the test and refine the coding, concentrate on a second participant or fix coding mistakes. Prof. Boullier comments “One of the key reasons for us to choose The Observer was the fact that it offers all required functionality in one package, from test design all the way to statistical analysis”. In one single application and environment, The Observer Video-Pro offers:

• a test configuration tool which allows to predefine many different tests and quickly switch from one to another via stored protocols
• a multimodal digital video, audio and screen capture recording tool
• a robust coding tool to capture the behaviors and interactions of the participants
• a video editing tool which can extract interesting video sequences from encoded behaviors
• a powerful analysis and data presentation tool  

 

 

 

 

 

 

A usability test in progress. One person is encoding the behavior of the user while the other controls the cameras.

Professor D. Boullier can be contacted at lutin@utc.fr.  

Noldus Information Technology, founded in 1989, is a leading developer of software and integrated solutions for computer-aided observation, recording and analysis of behavior and human-system interaction. More than 3000 companies, governmental organizations and universities in over 75 countries use Noldus products to measure behavioral processes, to improve the quality of their data, and to save valuable time. The company operates from offices in the Netherlands, Germany, France and USA.