University of Texas at Austin School of Information -- Real-time crowdsourced usability test

To participate in this online event, please click on the following link: http://www.worldusabilityday.org/events/2011/online-only

User-centered design entails the use of a variety of methods to gather user data to inform and validate user interface designs. There is a dearth of empirical data comparing and contrasting the various methods. We in the School of Information have been investigating crowdsourced usability testing, and comparing it to traditional lab-based, end-user testing. We would like to invite the World Usability Day community to watch, and perhaps participate, as we conduct a real-time crowdsourced usability test. As director of our Information eXperience lab, I will offer a very brief introduction to our School and our Lab. Then I will introduce MSIS (Master's of Science in Information Studies) candidate, Eric Liu, and Eric will introduce our test. We will test the School of Information's website. Eric will have pre-qualified some participants, but we will also open the test up to all participants (which will also afford access by some spammers; Eric will show us how to filter them out). We will invite visitors to check back in with us at 11:00, at which point we'll announce how many participants we've had so far. Then we'll invite people to check back in at 11:30, at which point we'll close the test, announce how many responses we've gotten, and offer some early, very preliminary findings. World Usability Day participants may send us their email addresses for an early copy of the write-up that we generate from this study. Our goals are to introduce people (potential students, and potential collaborators) to the IX Lab, and to demo crowdsourced usability testing for the WUD community.