Evaluation of Collaborative System Usability

Development and investigation of techniques for evaluating the usability of software applications used by multiple people at the same time (such as Instant Messaging, collaborative editing, meeting support tools, shared electronic whiteboards)

A large amount of research has been published describing the evaluation of the usability of single-user software. Evaluation of mult-user software has received less attention, and remains an active area for research. Our research has developed several scenarios that are useful for evaluating a variety of collaborative computing applications. This summer, the plan is to test the scenarios with several applications and do a preliminary evaluation of the scenarios.

A second aspect of this project is the management of data from multi-user studies. Our prior research has identified some data management issues that are significantly more complicated for multi-user than single-user evaluations. We have developed a data analysis and visualization program to help meet these requirements. During the summer, we are going to enhance the multi-media recording and playback functionality of that program.

There are no specific requirements for the scenario evaluation portion of this project. For the data management portion, programming skills in Visual Basic are needed to modify the existing program. Familiarity with digital audio and/or video is a plus.