We've just rebuilt our "Usability Lab" into a "Design Lab". It still has lots of expensive glass and camera's etc, but it's been designed to work as two team design spaces as well.
One important part of this upgrade though was to enable testing/evaluations to be done easily elsewhere in the organisation. Having lots of good MacBooks makes good screen and user recording easy and cheap (Silver Back / Screen Flow / iShowU). We also have two floating camcorders to use for interviews, mobile or paper testing. Prior to this job, I've never had a dedicated lab space, and I have to say having a well set up lab is fantastic %u2013 we can run sessions quickly and efficiently. Most importantly for us, it lets us get lots of people in the observation room to see how our users actually use our products. That said, the ability to run effective sessions out of the lab is a critical skill for our team. Partly because the lab is often fully booked, and sometimes because it's better to run sessions elsewhere for lots of other good reasons. My best advice is to "design" your sessions to suit your needs and your products needs. Effective sessions can be run in so many ways, and always practice makes perfect :-) Chris -- Chris McLay. Designer. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://eeoh.com.au/chris/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30224 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
