We also have a modular desk, allowing us to easily configure the room based on what we’re testing, and it also conveniently hides many of the inevitable wires and cabling (Figure 3b).įigure 3b: Modular furniture to all for more flexible layouts. If you test mobile or physical products such as remote controls or TVs, consider having a comfy couch as well (Figure 3a). In the usability lab you should have comfortable chairs for the moderator (they have to sit there all day!), participant, and note taker. The space you have available may dictate the size, but for reference, our labs are about 12 by 14 feet and our observation rooms are between 12 by 10 feet and 16 by 10 feet (see Figure 2).įigure 2: Floor plan of a lab and adjacent observation room. The observation room often needs to be as big as or bigger than the lab and will need to accommodate five to ten observers. You’ll need a space that’s big enough to accommodate two to three people, and it should be next to another office that can be used as an observation room (with an optional one-way mirror). It takes both planning and a little improvising. You should plan a sizable budget for technology and a space you can customize with lots of wires. Having recently built and installed two new labs in our offices in Denver, CO, I can tell you a bit about the process to save you some of the headache. We needed dedicated space and the right technology to support this amount of usability evaluation. We conduct usability tests every week and can have hundreds of participants in our labs each month. “Lab” is of course a fancy way of saying an office or room-not the image of chemicals and electroshock treatment that the word “lab” probably conjures up. Mature UX organizations are also three times more likely to use a one-way mirror in usability labs.įigure 1: More mature UX organizations are more likely to have dedicated spaces for usability testing, with one-way mirrors, video feeds, and communication tools (data from the UX Maturity Report). Organizations rated as mature in UX are almost twice as likely to have a dedicated usability space as those rated as nonmature (see Figure 1). Having a dedicated space for testing is a hallmark of organizations with high UX maturity. You don’t need a dedicated usability lab to conduct a usability test.īut if you or your organization conducts more than the occasional usability test, which it probably should (another topic in itself), you may want to consider setting up a dedicated usability lab.
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