Usability of MultimediaServices                      

Multimedia services are designed to be used by different kinds of users, with a variable amount of experience and skill in using them. The user interfaces for residential (home) users should therefore be very easy to understand, to learn and to use, it should be safe and it should be tolerant to mistakes . For multimedia services intended for professional work, the easiness of learning is also important. In addition to that, optimisation and adequate functionality of the user interface for experienced users becomes important, as the service should improve the work. Feedback from tests about the usability of multimedia services is important both for developers of multimedia services and for the end users of these services including providers and people responsible for the introduction of multimedia and CSCW applications.

JUPITER carries out tests of user interfaces for two different types of multimedia services: retrieval services for residential users and video-conference based CSCW tools for business users. The objective of the experiments is to gather knowledge on good usability of multimedia services. The results from the tests will lead to guidelines for the design of user interfaces and optimised functionality of retrieval services and of video-conferencing CSCW tools and services. Also usability of commercial CSCW applications is checked to provide selection criteria for the most suitable applications.

To achieve this, special usability testing methods are applied, where users representing different important user groups are asked to execute a number of tasks which are as close as possible to the real user scenario of the service. Two different retrieval services and two different CSCW applications are used in the trials. To study the influence of cultural environment the same multimedia services are tested in several countries.

Photos: Usability Test Lab and Usability trials

The test sessions take place in a "realistic" environment and are videotaped. The users are interviewed during and after the tests. Information will be extracted on user errors, their persistance, frequency among the user group and their effects and on user opinions and understanding on the user interface.