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:

• Novel interaction paradigms. Especially 'off the desk' interaction like ubiquitous and mobile computing. There is a special interest in design for affect and non-goal oriented use.
• Understanding and supporting social activity. Including computer supported cooperative play and personal task management
• Design for complex and sensitive settings. Especially 'out of the office' situations, e.g. the home, care settings, emergency management situations.
• Stretching the use-centred toolkit. For example use-centered innovation, mobile usability, tool-centred usability engineering.
• Research methods in interaction design. Including techniques for studying mobile use and use in sensitive settings, understanding social activity and actor network theory.

IDEA Lab
Department of Information Systems
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Vic 3010
Australia
URL: http://idealab.dis.unimelb.edu.au