{"id":1489,"date":"2014-12-10T15:05:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T15:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2018-02-19T17:02:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T17:02:16","slug":"setting-cost-effective-user-research-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2014\/12\/10\/setting-cost-effective-user-research-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting up a cost effective user research lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our user research \/ usability lab is very simple and cheap solution for everyday activities \u2013 coming in well under normal costs. It is relatively portable, \u00a0procurement and health and safety supervision free and can be setup within minutes. We tested a number of more advanced setups\u00a0based on\u00a0Apple TV and\/or Wi-Fi solutions but all of them sooner or later failed as a reliable solution in our environment.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the environment, we need to work under the supervision of the facilities team to\u00a0make sure everything meets health and safety rules. That includes underfloor cables, painting, moving quiet\u00a0pods, colours and reflectiveness of the desk, and the location of lighting. There is a cost associated with\u00a0these services.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our dev network needs to meet required\u00a0security levels which can result in\u00a0limitations. Once we started to use the dev environment to browse alpha,\u00a0Apple TV got mixed up over Wi-Fi and failed to find IPs of server.<\/span><\/p>\n

We decided to go with a simple wired solution<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Our setup includes<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

a)<\/b> 2 rooms within a reasonable\u00a0proximity<\/span><\/p>\n

One of them is a usability testing<\/b> room and the other is a (bigger) observation<\/b> room. It is important that participants are not aware of the presence of the observers. It would be ideal to have 2 rooms divided by a sound proof wall or have one room above another on different floors. We could not make an arrangement with facilities regarding any of the above solutions. As a result we used a quiet pod and one of our meeting rooms, approximately\u00a015 metres\u00a0apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

b)<\/b> 2 computers, iPad, iPhone<\/span><\/p>\n

We use 13\u2033 Macbook Air and iMac (the basic version will do the job), iPad and iPhone \/ iPod<\/span><\/p>\n

c)\u00a0<\/b>We have two 32\u2033 TV \u2013 any with HDMI sockets will be fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

d)<\/b> 2 x HDMI\u00a0and USB\u00a0cables, 2 x HDMI\u00a0to\u00a0thunderbolt adaptors, HDMI\u00a0to lightning adaptor<\/span><\/p>\n

Our cables are 20 metres long. We aimed for a mid to high price range as the length is above the recommended average, especially for the USB cable. It\u2019s safe to buy any HDMI\u00a0to\u00a0thunderbolt adaptors however the\u00a0recommendation is to select\u00a0the original Apple HDMI\u00a0to lightning adaptor.<\/span><\/p>\n

e)<\/b> webcam (*optional \u2013 another webcam might be required look at Silverback problems)<\/span><\/p>\n

As main source, we went with\u00a0Logitech C920 HD Webcam (USB) as it delivers great video and descent sound. If you have\u00a0fluorescent lighting you might consider using Webcam Settings app to change the frequency of webcam to eliminate flickering.\u00a0https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/gb\/app\/webcam-settings\/id533696630?mt=12<\/span><\/p>\n

f)<\/b>\u00a0Silverback 2.0 app, UX recorder and quicktime app<\/span><\/p>\n

We use Silverback 2.0 app to record sessions. It was paid software however good news is it is now available as freeware. The Silverback app is incompatible with 2013 onward Macbooks. It can not use the in-built camera and results in the failure to\u00a0record sound. A quick fix is to plug in the cheapest camera you can find and select an in-built microphone in audio settings\u00a0(hold Alt Key and click speaker next to clock).<\/span><\/p>\n

The UX recorder app for iPad and iPhone uses in-built browser and can record the screen. The only disadvantage we found is that if the\u00a0power button is pressed during a recording session, the app quits and the whole video is lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quicktime \/ Menu -> New Movie Recording -> Select Logitech camera for video and sound by clicking arrow on right side \u2013 we use it to stream the video and sound from USB Logitech camera.<\/span><\/p>\n

What our setup does\u2026<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We pulled the HDMI and USB cable under the floor from the Pod to the observer room. The MacBook Air \/ iPad \/ iPhone streams desktop video via HDMI to TV1 in the observers room. Logitech Webcam streams via USB and Quicktime video and sound to iMac and from\u00a0iMac to TV2 via short HDMI cable. In the meantime, the software on the device records the desktop, from camera view and sound. The MacBook is connected via Wi-Fi to our dev network, however we have the backup LAN wire in the pod.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Issues<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Only one \u2013 probably due to the length of the USB cable (5 max recommended, ours has 20) sound noise builds up and we need to switch it off and on again to reset it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things to consider<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n