AWE Project
AWE is the Animated work environment. It is a fully functional programmable workstation with several 'modes' that users can put it in to do various tasks. The full website for the program can be found here. My advisor (Dr. Lee Gugerty and I worked on the project to usability test the prototype designs.
Our goal was to comprehensively test the prototype designs so that the finished designs would accomplish the goals set forth by the cognitive task analyses that Dr. Gugerty and Rachael Daniels conducted early on in the research process.
To accomplish that we created a couple tasks, one a mathematical task, and the other a visual design task. The mathematical task involved doing the tax return for a fictitous friend who had fallen ill. The design task involved architecture students designing a building for an infill lot in New Orleans, LA.
Aside from coming up with the tasks, we had to develop the materials, and oversee the tasks. For the architecture task, we usually had help from Henrique, since he helped us develop the task, and he is an Architecture PhD student.
My favorite part of the task was a little timer/map program I made in visual basic. It allowed the usability testers to record when an area of the AWE workstation was being used or attended to. This greatly simplified data recording and analysis. The program can be downloaded here . Contact me if you'd like a copy of the source.
