Lecture 5 Usability Testing Tool Support

Traditional Usability Testing • Either – In the field with observers – In the lab with sophisticated (expensive) recording gear

Usability Testing Tools Support & Usability Research

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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New way

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Morae Usability Testing Software

• Software tools to support testing • Synchronised data logging – Screen capture – Keyboard & mouse input capture – Video – Sound – url tracking

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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• This is not the only product – but the one we have on campus • Recorder – resides on the users machine • Remote Viewer / Manager – resides on the observers machines

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Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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Morae Recorder

Morae Remote Viewer

• Is enabled at the beginning of a session and captures those inputs selected. • Setting available for frequency/quality of inputs captured.

• Can observe recording session across the internet – Needs ip address of machine running Morae recorder – http://video.techsmith.com/morae/lates t/demo/summary/enu/morae_overview. html

• It is quite resource hungry – This can effect the measure of time performance of the software

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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Automated Tools for web testing

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What about other types of devices?

• Accessibility evaluation – Bobby – http://webxact.watchfire.com/ • Lots of others at – http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtool s.html#Evaluation

• Mobile phones • Pdas • Imbedded interfaces – Car – Fridge – Dvd recorder

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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Usability testing research

Usability testing research

Can emulators and labs give accurate results? • Is it the same – using a mobile phone in the lab as it is while you are at a night club? – using a navigation system in the lab as it is while you are driving a car?

“Usability Testing of Mobile Devices: A Comparison of Three Approaches”, Betiol & Cybis • Three tests of a mobile phone – an emulator in the lab • Recorded with a video camera

– a phone in the lab

• Or walking around the city?

• If the lab can give you reasonable results – Does a emulator (running on a PC) provide the same results as the actual device? Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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Mobile device study

• On a document camera so the interaction could be recorded – this made the phone a bit hard to use

– a phone in the field • Recorded with a video camera – restricted the naturalness of the use Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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Mobile device study

• Cost/time of set up is – Cheapest/easiest for the emulation in the lab – Most expensive/hardest with the document camera in the lab • The lab emulation study identified 80% of the problems and 3 out of 4 of the most serious. – But changes to the emulator can have drastic effects on the usability • The field study still was not completely mobile because the user was seated and there was a camera and observer close by.

• However one could conclude that using an emulator is a cost effective, reasonable alternative.

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

Lecture 4 – Usability: Usability Testing Tools Support

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• Notice the detail of the task description included in the paper.

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