User-centered Design and Evaluation of Virtual Worlds

Bouda, Tomáš User-centered Design and Evaluation of Virtual Worlds., 2012 . In Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds: 2nd Global Conference, Prague (Czech Republic), 12th - 14th March 2012. (Unpublished) [Conference paper]

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English abstract

Virtual worlds are objects of much research. Such research is needed for future wider application within education, science field or market domain. For instance, Hype cycle presents that virtual worlds are coming in productive phase in 5-10 years. Virtual world as we know today are not user friendly or effective as a seriously used communication tool. Of course, there is a lot of progress in this area. Let me consider Facebook plug-in for instance, which brings much easier login process compared to Second Life or Open Simulator installed client. Second thing could be release of SL Viewer 2.0. However, studies show that there are a lot of users demotivated or disappointed from the virtual world`s environment and after their first visit they never come back. That has to change. Paper focuses at the problem from Information science point of view. Specifically, the author takes user-centered design as a core approach, which is needed to improve software usability. Usability as a broader term for experienced usability, apparent usability, user friendliness, quality of user interface, etc. must be measured and evaluated. The target of the paper is to present methodology of testing and evaluating virtual world environments. Paper summarizes core steps within user-center design, which is user task analysis, expert guidelines-based evaluation, formative user-centered evaluation, summative comparative evaluation. More closely, user task analysis contains pre-research, which is needed for understanding of users` needs, their work culture and their work goals, which they perform daily. There are work scenarios developed within expert guidelines-based evaluation and then users go through them within formative user-centered evaluation. After redesign of environment users go through two or more variations of developed user interfaces and analyze which one is better. There is going to be a short overview of the virtual region VIAKISK within Open Simulator presented as well.

Item type:	Conference paper
Keywords:	komunikace člověk-počítač,design zaměřený na uživatele,virtuální svět,rozhraní,User-centered Design,Second Life,human-computer interaction,3D interface,virtual world,evaluation,
Subjects:	A. Theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information. > AC. Relationship of LIS with other fields . B. Information use and sociology of information > BI. User interfaces, usability.
Depositing user:	Tomáš Bouda
Date deposited:	31 Aug 2012
Last modified:	02 Oct 2014 12:23
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17472

References

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