Usability Design and Usability Evaluation for Virtual Environments

Welcome to the pages about the Design and Evaluation for Virtual Environments.

Here are a number of issues pertiment to evaluations of Collaborative Virtual Environments.

Goals:

This is a break down of general and specific goals of CVEs which one wants to identify before starting a usability experiment.

Constraints:

This is a break down of issues to take into account when setting up CVE usability experiments. You will find a discussion of the constraints on evaluation methods caused by the distributed, multi-user and prototype nature of CVE evaluations.

Evaluation Methods:

This is a discussion of the need for a systematic approach to CVE evaluation. You will find a discussion on connections between CVE evaluation and traditional HCI concerns, and connnection between CVE evaluation and the cycle of scientific inquiry into human behaviour.

Design Guidelines:

Very little information is available on design guidelines for CVEs. In due time the findings from CVE evaluations will be translated into CVE design guidelines. You will find a discussion of the issues involved and a collection of links to relevant other pages. More information will be added when it becomes available.

If you find any of this information useful and want to reference this material you can use:

Tromp, J.G., (1997). Methodology for Evaluating Collaborative Virtual Environments, in: Proceedings of 4th UK VR SIG conference, Bristol.

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Tutorial VRST'99: Systematic Usability Design for Virtual Environments.

COVEN Project Public Deliverable: Del2.9: Systematic Usability Guidelines for Collaborative Virtual Environments.

The first international workshop on Usability and Evaluation for Virtual Environments, UEVE'98:

The original Call for Papers and the electronic Workshop Proceedings.

Abstract for Lunch-time discussion on Usability for VEs during CVE'98:

A discussion which took place during the CVE'98 conference we wrote a short position statement. This contains the issues we think are pertinent to VE evaluation and design from a usability point of view. You will find a number of arguments which, we hope, will focus the topic of discussion.

Summary of CVE'98 Lunch-time discussion:

This is a summary of the things we discussed during the CVE'98 Lunch-time session.