Labs
See how a comfortable, well-equipped, professional research facility can impact the value of your research project.
In-House Labs
In-House Labs Usability Sciences offers usability labs at our headquarters in Irving, Texas as well as at parner locations across the country. We utilize these state-of-the-art, high-tech labs to capture, analyze and provide top-quality user feedback for our clients.
Within the facilities, test participants work in a private room free from distractions while the research team and clients watch from a dedicated observation room next door.
A large one-way mirror between the user and observation rooms allows direct observation of participants, and a dedicated monitor in the observation room provides a live onscreen view of exactly what the participant sees, along with a picture-in-picture of the participant’s face. This arrangement provides our clients a clear view of the participants’ facial expressions and their behavior. The sessions are recorded with state-of-the-art software that combines video, audio and logging notes for analysis and creating video clips.
The audio and/or video feed can also be transmitted to our client conference rooms, which are large enough to accommodate an entire team. For those who are unable to be on-site for testing, we stream the audio and video feeds over the Internet, so they can follow along on their personal computers or from your office.
These advanced labs make it possible for us to offer numerous user research services, including usability testing, rapid iterative testing, competitive testing, design walk-through testing, mobile and tablet testing and eye-tracking, to address a variety of research needs.
Portable Labs
With over 25 years of experience of testing on the road, Usability Sciences has perfected a portable version of our usability lab, so we can bring our testing to wherever your customers are. The portable lab allows us to test in clients’ offices, stores and numerous other locations. With this flexibility, we can interact with your customers in their natural environment.
Remote Testing
Thanks to modern technology, a variety of user experience research testing methodologies can be conducted online very effectively, often for a lower cost than traditional lab testing. If the parameters of your research project require testing among users spread out across a wide geographic area, we can construct a fully-remote testing program, administered online, that will generate insights on par with lab testing.
Many user experience research and usability testing companies conduct online tests via a “crowdsourced” model, and while this can occasionally be a reasonably effective way to collect generalized feedback, the flaw with this model is that it lacks the recruitment element. At Usability Sciences, all of our tests – lab-based or remote – are performed on users that have been specifically recruited based on their profile and how well it aligns to your target users. Don’t let the lure of fast, cheap, mass testing produce results that don’t align with your true target audience. Let our team help you get value out of remote testing the right way.
Multilingual Testing Setup
From time to time our clients need to test customers whose primary language is not English, which occurs frequently with in-country usability testing and remote usability testing. In this case the moderator asks questions in English, which are translated for the participant by an interpreter. The participant’s responses are then translated into English by the interpreter for the moderator and client.
We can record either the English comments alone or both languages on the video. Additionally, in-house and remote observers can listen to the language of their choice; we can send the feeds for the different languages to separate conference rooms or stream the feeds over different phone connections.
Need to Rent A Lab?
Want to learn more about our state-of-the-art lab facilities? Contact a team member to arrange a tour, schedule your project, or rent a Usability Lab.