Re: "Living Rooms" in Usability Labs

the Sun Menlo Park usability labs has its largest room reconfigured as a "playspace" with funky furniture, trendy lighting, etc.  This was used beneficially in a few consumer product studied, but I doubt the investment in redecorating the room really paid off in more accurate test results.

I've used Cisco's generic usability labs "tricked out" with comfy lounge chairs (borrowed from the labs' lobby), potted plants, lamps, and a big HD TV.  That environment was successfully used to test a consumer TV product.  Test Subjects seemed to accept the livingroom-like environment and behave as they would at home.  The chair seating angle I believe is a critical element in a realistic environment.  No one seated in a "task chair" is going to hold their body nor a remote control in the same way as they would on the sofa in a living room.  Additional detail that would make for a more realistic test environment would be harder to simulate in a lab: kids running around, spouse interference/collaboration, the phone ringing, being tired at the end of the day, etc.

the Sun Santa Clara Java-Mobility usability lab was used to test mobile devices.  I am guessing that this was slightly less accurate, since the environmental dimensions of using a mobile device are a big part of their usability.  For example, being in a distracting, noisy, visually stimulating, constantly-changing environment, having to look up when crossing the street, etc.  In the lab, the user either had the device bolted to a desk (very unrealistic) or they held it but there was a gooseneck-mounted camera glued to the device with a long cable, limiting movement and making the whole thing heavy and unwieldy (which is not the UX when using a mobile device).  It's tough doing realistic usability testing on a device if you want to capture traditional u-testing data such as screen video and
  face video.




On Sep 1, 2010, at 7:07pm, Mitchell Gass wrote:

> For studies of products that are most likely to be used in a living room, a client is interested in adding a "living room" test room to their existing usability lab. I believe I've seen two in the Bay Area, one at Intuit and another at the old Sun Microsystems lab in Mountain View. Do these still exist? Are there others? If you've designed or used rooms like these, do you have any advice you can give for someone who'd like to build a room like this?
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions!
> 
> Mitchell Gass
> uLab | PDA: Learning from Users | Designing with Users
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