Smart room office Usability testing Štěpán Koutek (koutes1@fel.cvut.cz) Vojtěch Brom (veb@volny.cz) 5. 12. 2005 Smart room office - Usability testing

Project description Inspection and design of possibilities of the interaction between "clever room“ (Smart room) and users. Application of designed methods to case of the office in a company and design the simulation of those methods for usability testing. Usabilty testing of the designed interaction system.

Project goals Design "Smart-room office interaction system" and test it's usabilty on the case of one person beeing alone in the office. Observe informations about usability of the interaction system methods from designed tests. Especially find out the opinions of the participants on usability of each interaction method we use in the test. Find out global usability of any clever rooms (if the participants would like to use it sometime in the future).

Test setup The system we want to test hasn't existed yet. We chose three distribution chanels for interaction. Talking head and Big screen - voice control PC, PDA – standard control (mouse, keyboard…) The system interface – graphical menu Different message types Mapping of the message depends on message type. Automatic device switching.

Test setup - menu

Test setup - device representation Talking head – speaker + recorded messages Big screen – digital projector PC – PC + VNC (automatic control) PDA – PDA connected to notebook (atm. control)

Test setup - layout testers PDA participant moderator

Task list Four groups of tasks First three groups each for one device for each participant in another order Fourth - combination of all devices participant use devices according to his decision Typical tasks to receive differenet types of messages to switch betewen devices

Results of the test We have tested five participants. The participants have split to two groups with different opinions. Against new interaction methods They would like to use only PC For new interaction methods They like using voice control. They would like bigger set of voice commands. Possiblity of control all devices by voice. Possibility of turn off message reading.

Results of the test – cont. For new interaction methods The usability of PDA is not so comfortable. PDA is good in cases when they need to be mobile – not for interaction in office. Offer device to switch instead of automatic switching. All participants prefere simply clear text oriented interface – no virtual human face etc. is needed. Comlete report of the test is available on http://www.smartroom.koutek.net

Thank you for your attention.