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The UX Lab

Role

Co-founder, concept, UX research methods, Instruction of ux research and design methods

(Unfortunately site is crappy wordpress theme now...)

Problem

When I started my Human Computer Interaction PhD at Iowa State we did not have a place to conduct usability tests and get hands-on experience with current software, hardware, research methods, etc. - not even a class on usability methods.

Solution

A core group of grad students came together to build The UX Lab to create a centralized place with the hardware, software, and the know-how to build useful usability studies for all students wanting to learn about usability in every facet (design, research, methodology). This was open to all other students (not just HCI) to foster well-designed studies across disciplines. From a grassroots grad student project, this spun off into actual classes within the core HCI course!

The UX Lab Details

The UX Lab was founded to bring and spread UX methodology. It is not simply the hardware, but introducing the correct process of using that hardware and outputting a meaningful body of UX research. It was only a few grad students, but we made big changes within the University as a whole with the introduction of UX methods over other departs, truly bringing UX into a cross-disciplinary bridge.

Services we offered

General User Experience Consulting

incorporate your users into more of your design and development

Usability Testing

measure how users navigate and accomplish tasks on a system

Heuristic Analysis / Expert Review

system could be easier to use for your customers

Interaction Design

maximize the user experience for your system

Prototyping

low-cost representation of the user interface to a system to mock up quickly

User Experience Research

best variables to collect to measure user experience?

Context of Use Analysis

behaviors, processes and needs of your user base as they relate to your system

Eye Tracking

Visualize what users see on screen the via heatmap

Interactive learning modeluals

We created an interactive learning modules that helped people new to UX learn how to navigate user feedback, as shown below. This is just a JPG of the original Flash (ugh, I know) website that was interactive and linked videos and resources. I still have the videos and docs if you are interested in learning more.

Eye tracking

Built a fully functional eye tracking system for user testing using:

• Hardware:
• Eye-Tech VT2

• Software:
• iMotions

Details

I put together this eye tracking system for free as iMotions was just starting (it was one person, Peter, the founder) and the VT2 was still new tech and I agreed to write a white paper about it. Ended up being a very capable system and now sold as a package to this day. I highly recommend it. I completed many user tests and having eye tracking data overlays on top of think-aloud testing sessions was immensely helpful. On the screenshot above you can see how pictures of peoples faces draws the human eye, also reading though the main navigation.