Interactive Prototyping

Usability lab

Three-room facility including reception room, test room, control room. The test room is big enough to host also group work sessions if researchers want to test human interaction or product use or assembly by consumers. See more information among the web pages for the Ozlab web site.

Ozlab

Ozlab is a GUI experimental system developed to admit easy testing, even improvements, of ideas for interactive products. It admits non-programmers to become concept developers and interactivity testers. For the skilled interaction designer, it is a very useful tool.

Testing with potential users is vital in interaction design. However, testing would be expensive if the interactivity has to be programmed. Ozlab lets the designer test with real users in real situations before programming takes place. The university admits internal as well as external partners to perform experiments with multimedia user interfaces. The Ozlab technique is adapted for development of interactivity on different units, and we welcome collaboration around new extensions of Ozlab, e.g. to iPhone and other smartphones.

Ozlab is an excellent tool for professional user interface designers and interaction designers to easily improvise and test a variety of alternative interactive ideas, and also useful for discussing interaction design with stakeholders and for demonstrating behaviour for the programmers who will implement the functions.

The Eye-tracker

The Eye-tracker monitor available in the usability lab is manufactured by Tobii Technology, world leader in eye-tracking and eye-control solutions. Supporting software is available to:

• set up experiments
• enter the number of test participants for each experiment
• select different kinds of sources to eye-track (e.g., images, web pages, movie clips, etc.)
• and analyze the recorded eye-gaze from participants by defining Areas Of Interest (AIOs), using Hot Spots images, replaying the participant's gaze pattern
• and other features.