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Measuring User Experience through Designing a Usability Lab
Overview
While working for Lodestone Research, we needed our own lab to assist with many logistics and as a natural part of creating an income source rather than adding to or expenditures by using other labs. The challenge was to make the lab operable within a limited space and budget, and to support multiple testing scenarios, including focus groups.
Lab Design
The graphic below depicts the general layout of the lab.
Tasks that the lab supported included, but were not limited to:
- Behind the glass viewing, comfortably sitting 8 to 10, and with good views of the room and participant.
- Usability testing software for taking notes and marking task start/stop times
- Video recording and playback into both rooms
- Video camera position from two of four locations. Cameras could be moved from one location to another, depending upon the needs of the study. This was useful, for example, in studies that required users to install hardware cards in PC towers.
- Outside phone line to assist with scenarios where a participant may need to call customer care
- Split view of the participant's monitor and video of participant displayed to viewers behind the glass
- Lab could be taken mobile
Accomplishments
Lodestone's lab was identified as a national resource alongside labs from other well known usability firms such as The Usability Center (ULAB), Usability Sciences Corporation, and UserWorks, Inc. ( Reference )
Building on That
To date I have worked out of 10+ labs or facilities that make usability testing possible. While each has it's setup, some more technologically advanced than others, the center stage is still the user and the product. When facilitating a usability study, of core importance to me are the following:
- Let the product be the product. What you think you understand about it today may all be changed when the last participant helps you to understand that to them it is really something else.
- The questions you ask are important. Yes, there will be a standard battery of questions and probing to understand answers that will be a natural part of the study. When the participants have completed their last rating, there is a time when reflection about what they just experienced, and your gut feeling about what they are really saying about the product, mince in a way that can provide great insight.
- I have found, to this day, that every "last participant" has something to tell me I didn't know, and often they are the ones that solidify the "ah ha" about a problem that has been boiling to the surface but not yet come. Don't be in a hurry, even on a long study, to get past that last participant.
- It's about the relationship you set up with a user that lets them feel comfortable with you as an individual, and still feel free to be their excited or exacerbated self when interacting with the product. It's how to be the calm amidst the party, storm, or even tears.
- And my favorite, possibly, is simply listening to the participant and processing their behaviors to understand why the user does what they do. The ability to recognize patterns, both behavioral and cognitive in nature.
Skills
- Functional requirements
- Task analysis
- Usability Testing and Facilitation
- Budget management
- Delivering on time and on budget
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