What Makes Us Unique

When you do business with the Usability Center at Southern Poly, you not only get the use of constantly upgraded, state-of-the-art usability lab facilities, but you also get the full services of a technology university—its staff, its faculty, and its resources—to help support your project.

Customer Education

Unlike some testing facilities that conduct external testing and deliver a report to the client, we believe that usability testing has a two-fold function:

(1) to gain results that improve products in development, and

(2) to educate the team about the user-centered design process and the way in which real users interact with their products.

This two-pronged approach means that you get instant results from testing and long-term understanding of the user experience.

Experienced Usability Center Team Members

For every project, we organize a team that uniquely serves the requirements of the project. Because we have the resources of the entire university to draw upon, as well as the resources of our graduates who are well-schooled in our processes, we can create the right team for the job.

Our team members include a Team Lead and one or two other experienced team members to manage the logging/data entry and video recording. Team members also facilitate in the planning and development of the testing.

Your Team Members

In addition to the Usability Center team members, we work with one to three members from your organization.

Your team members represent the stakeholders for your project. Typical stakeholders come from product development, marketing, user assistance, training, and quality assurance.

The Knowledge You Gain

When you are first getting started with usability testing, this team approach provides the added benefit of educating and training your team members so that they can begin to incorporate a user-centered design process into the development of your products.

With our process, you don't just get a report and the videotapes; you acquire the knowledge to begin doing usability testing yourself—should you choose to do so.

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