[Sigia-l] Re: Equipment recommendations for a Mobile Usability

[Bill Killam]

Amanda,

I realize you said your budget is small, but there are vendors that
provide portable usability lab solutions already configured for picture
in picture, remote or in room use, data logging, etc.  We have two of
them at our offices and wouldn't consider building one ourselves even
though we have the technical savvy to do so.  Yes, you can throw some
equipment together and get by, but I haven't found it to be cost
effective.  The labs we use are fully portable and can be placed in
overhead on planes for safe transport.  And our lab vendor even has
developed adaptors we use for testing paper prototypes (with picture in
picture) as well as testing PDAs, cell phones and other portable
devices, and even for conducting man-in-motion (sic) activities (or
meeting and focus groups).  Unless you want to get into the lab
business, building even a rudimentary one could open a can of worms.
Then there's the support and maintenance issue.

BTW, I would not consider your own laptop a necessity.  You'd have to
connect into someone else's network or phone line to get access to the
internet - something not everyone is comfortable with.  And many tests
we do are early in the design phase, sometimes behind people firewalls,
and not always on the internet.  Your situation may be different.  Then
there's the issue of accessibility and the need to load and configure
different types of adaptive technologies.  Though we can and do use own
laptops on occasions, we often use our labs connected to the
participants own computer.  It's non-intrusive and saves a lot of work.
And screen capture software has a number of severe limitations for
usability testing.  It also risky for data loss and has some hidden
costs. (Believe me, I've been down this path many times.)

Bill
-------------------------------------------------------
Bill Killam, MA CHFP
President, User-Centered Design, Inc.
20548 Deerwatch Place
Ashburn, VA 20147
email: bkillam at user-centereddesign.com
Work: (703) 729-0998
Mobile: (703) 626-6318
Web: www.user-centereddesign.com


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Amanda McGuire
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 8:32 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Re: Equipment recommendations for a Mobile
Usability

Stephen Holmes <sholmes at topladder.com.au> wrote:

> Why an external keyboard as a requirement? You are
> testing mobile apps 
> on a laptop and who packs an external keyboard when
> they are "mobile"? ...

I am actually planning on testing Web sites and
applications which would most likely be used in a
desktop setting. I just want the lab itself to be
"mobile" so that we could easily test in different
locations, with different user groups. 

Please keep all the great recommendations coming, and
I will post a summary to the list later this week!

Thanks,

Amanda

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