Paper reading #28: The Coffee Lab: Developing a public Usability Space

Reference InformationTitle: The Coffee Lab: Developing a public Usability Space
Author: Maria Karam
Presented at: CHI 2010, April 10-15,2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Summary

This paper talks about coffee shops. In particular about a lab in a public usability space situated in a coffee shop in Toronto. It's a pilot project aimed at supporting usability studies in a mixed user space, where a variety of software applications, hardware systems and other interactive technologies are put to the public for evaluation. One advantage to this approach is to facilitate the collection of usability data from a large and diverse population of potential users.
The way the lab is setup is with wired and wireless network connections, a touch screen, multiple computers to run systems, web cameras for visual input and monitoring interactions.
The target participants can be anyone from staff, performers, students, spectators and local customers who frequent the coffee shop. Two main systems that are currently part of the Coffee Lab pilot tests are the Emoti-Chair and the  iGesture. Emoti Chair is a tactile audio system while the iGesture system is used to control the music at the Coffee Lab.

The authors had five evaluation stages:  

• Exposure: The first contact the user has with the technology.

• Experience: Researchers' interactions with the user while they are gaining experience with the system. Second stage participants often provide valuable feedback or report problems, if any.

• Experiment: Laboratory style experiments

• Extension: This stage offers an in-depth look at one or more users over time, providing a more detailed perspective of the user's interactions.

• Exploration: This stage occurs once the system has been evaluated, or when the research is between stages. Participants may leave feedback or provide comments.

Discussion

This was an interesting paper to read. The idea of using a coffee shop as a test location, rather  than the conventional lab is quite ingenious. I never would have thought that was possible, much less the owners of the coffee shop accepting to cooperate with the experiment. Coffee shops attract all kinds of people from various backgrounds who have different type of moods, so the authors can benefit from a wide pool of people.