Conducting Research Sessions

We were painfully aware of our lack of experience facilitating sessions with this kind of technology. To reduce ambiguity, we decided to run some "expert evaluations" with our 主播大秀 colleagues. By doing this, we hoped to:

Understand the "flow" of a session
Test battery life
Broadly investigate their response to the experience
Identify any immediate usability barriers

Essentially, we piloted the research session in a low impact way to minimise mistakes we might make when it came to the real thing. We learned a ton of things that made the research entirely unique from web or mobile based research, including:

1. You can't just look over your user's shoulder鈥�

Firstly (and most importantly), we were entirely blind as to what the user could see through the lenses of the Magic Leap 1. We're used to encouraging users to narrate their thoughts aloud during usability sessions; but asking them to also describe what they could see added an extra layer of complexity. This made it much more difficult for us to probe their thoughts and feelings with appropriate questions. On top of this, you might even have to chase them around the room as they explore the experience, so a clipboard might come in handy!

2. You can't just switch to another device

If your device fails during a desktop or mobile based test, often it's easy to switch to a backup. If you're using a web-based prototyping tool it's just a case of opening the link on another device. We only had a single headset with an on-board prototype, so didn't have this luxury. This is also why we were testing battery life, so we could see how long might be needed between sessions to give the device a power boost.

3. Your physical environment might affect the tech

The original room we reserved had minimal natural light and shiny whiteboards on the walls. This hampered the device's ability to understand the environment, and therefore made it less able to place 3D objects as seamlessly in the real world. Thankfully, we tested the room out a few days beforehand so switched to another in time for the expert evaluations.

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History

Publication

Rob Scott

Chris Gameson