A number of user studies are conducted in the HCW lab. If you are interested in participating in any of these studies, please visit the HCW User Studies page.
As part of the RIAM project, we have completed the following experiments:
This study aims to identify common input errors of mobile users (i.e. errors related to typing, pointing, clicking and dragging). We will compare the errors in this study with those input errors that have already been identified for motor impaired people, particularly the ones identified by Trewin and Pain. By investigating the commonalities of these two user domains, we will be able to support our hypothesis that mobile users experience similar difficulties those experienced by disabled people using standard PCs. This experiment has been approved by the Senate Committee on the Ethics of Research on Human Beings (study reference number 07188).
Further information about this study and the findings can be found in our technical report called “Rerunning Trewin and Pain’s experiment with mobile users”.
Small devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs, are not only used in a stationary situation, but also used while the user is mobile (e.g., walking). Therefore, it is important to investigate whether the typing and pointing errors identified under sitting condition also exist in mobile scenarios and whether the error rates will increase. If the error rates of small device users under a walking condition increase and reach the same magnitude with that of motor-impaired desktop users, it will be beneficial to migrate existing techniques that help motor-impaired desktop users to the small device user domain, addressing the common typing errors. As an extention to the previous study, this study investigate small device users’ typing and pointing errors under standing and walking situations. Results of the user study show that apart form transposition error (occurs when two characters adjacent to each other are typed in reverse order), typing errors identified with small device users under sitting condition were also observed under walking condition. When walking, the error rates of small device users increase to the same magnitude with, in some cases higher than, that of motor-impaired desktop users.
We have conduced a Barrier Walkthrough study with a group of expert and non-expert judges. These judges were asked to evaluate a Web page for both its accessibility for disabled people and mobile-friendliness. In summary, they were given a list of barriers and a Web page to investigate and they were asked to see if those barriers exist on the given page.