Usability Testing

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Workstation Serviceability
  • ​Overview: When IT decision makers research the purchase of workstations, a primary consideration is the ease of upgrading, servicing and repairing the systems.
  • Problem: Workstations had to be easy to lift, covers needed to be secure but easily removed, internal components needed to be accessible and well marked.
  • Methods: Iterative usability testing examined the placement of components, ease of cover removal, depth and location of handles, color coding of key touchpoints and ease of replacing or upgrading internal parts. 
  • Results: Through iterative usability and design, serviceability was improved and became a key differentiator for sales. Serviceability of workstations was mentioned as an important consideration for a successful 5 year contract win, valued at $125 million dollars.
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Documentation Redesign
  • Overview: Setup posters are included with all laptops. The poster redesign project looked at all posters, to streamline the creation process and maintain functionality and ease of use.
  • Problem: Posters were different sizes, there was variation in content and content was not shared across posters. Our team needed to test the existing posters,  recommend and test changes to the posters and ensure that changes did not affect ease of use.
  • Methods: Baseline usability test, iterative usability testing and recommendations throughout redesign.
  • Results: Generic illustrations and reusable content reduced the development and training time of document managers.  The reduced poster size and weight, saved on ink, paper and freight.  This provided an annual savings of $3.2 million, without negatively impacting ease of use.
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Streamlining Support
  • ​Overview: A Support Assistant is an application for your laptop and phone designed to help manage notifications, updates and troubleshooting for all of your devices.
  • Problem:  The Support Assistant was intended to improve the customer’s ability to maintain and troubleshoot their devices but adoption was low. Our team needed to establish a baseline, make recommendations for improvement and begin iterative testing.
  • Methods: Baseline usability test, competitive heuristic analysis, competitive usability tests, iterative usability  testing throughout redesign.
  • Results: The redesigned application saw increased adoption and decreased support calls. Time spent on the Support Assistant was converted into call center cost savings for an estimated impact of $25 million.

Ethnographic Research

Smart Home Innovation
  • Objective: Explore smart home early adoption, understand how people are using voice assistants and other new technologies, look for unmet needs.
  • Method: 12 in home interviews, all with smart devices, 6 with voice assistants and 6 without, 6 in CA and 6 in Houston TX, age range 30-59.
  • Research Findings: Major concerns were setup, energy use, security, privacy of information with a voice assistant, interoperability, adding more devices and falling short of truly being useful. Delights were easy shopping, quality speakers, fun with the new “family member”, control from outside of the home.
  • Results: This project spawned follow up work and led to an inventor patent submission-First Respondent Digital Assistant Emergency Recognition and Communication Device, filed April 2017 International Application No. PCT/US2017/028910
Digital Smart Scanner
  • Objective: Explore college libraries, focus on technology, copiers, scanners, internal systems and interacting with physical books.
  • Method: Interviewed a college librarian, conducted ethnographic visits to 3 college libraries and did contextual interviews with 6 students from 4 colleges.
  • Research Findings: Some publications were difficult to find, reserving space to study can be difficult, some books are too large or heavy to scan information easily, phone pictures may be hard to review, checking out is not easy, some books can not leave the library, there is no easy way to find related materials, proper citations are difficult. A paper prototype of a portable scanning device was created and tested with additional students.
  • Results: This research led to the creation of a new product, a digital scanner that is portable and includes features to digitally enhance physical content by highlighting related content and providing proper citation formats. The EU patent has been granted, Mobile Device with Transparent Display and Scanner Patent WO2018063339

​Warehouse Project
​Explored warehouses to create a handheld tracking and inventory device. Results showed that the product needed to be used in extreme weather, person may be wearing gloves, device needs a handle to be stowed in tool belt and should be ruggedized in case of drops.
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​Hospital Project
​Explored a portable tablet for doctors. Discovered that the size of the lab coat dictated the size of the device. The barrier to adoption was the software systems in place that were not easily translated to mobile platforms.
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​Education Project
​Explored schools and student homes in three countries to understand how technology was being implemented into the schools. Found the 1-1 model to be desired as long as there was an IT budget and training for the teaching staff. Parents needed reassurance that their child would not be held responsible for an expensive device.