Minimum usability equipment requirements

One of our items due November 30th was to obtain minimal testing equipment for current testing. However, on further thought, since current testing is not in the scope of our group's tasks, I've amended this to read: "Investigate minimum usability equipment requirements". I also see this as an early step in developing the proposal for a usability lab.

Here's what I've put together so far. Please share your comments, etc!

Minimal equipment
Hardware:

• Laptop with wireless capability
• Mouse

Software:

• TechSmith Camtasia Studio or Macromedia Captivate (screen capture and sync-ed audio recording)

Additional equipment

• Flash drive for transporting data
• Webcam for recording

Revised implementation timeline

Upon further consideration of what will be required to implement a usability program and the timeline previously developed, we revised that timeline as follows (with due dates in parentheses):

• Investigate minimum usability testing equipment requirements (November 30, 2005)
• Inventory existing UTA Libraries web products (November 30, 2005)
• Categorize web products to prepare for developing benchmarks (November 30, 2005)
• Define and itemize aspects/facets of usability and accessibility to be addressed by the usability program (December 31, 2005)
• Develop benchmarks for usability & accessibility (January 31, 2006)
• Develop local standards & guidelines (February 28, 2006)
• Prepare a draft proposal for local standards and a Web Style Guide outline (February 28, 2006)
• Get WAC and LMT approval of the proposal and style guide outline (April 2006 (2nd Tues: WAC, 3th Thurs: LMT))
• Create a UTA Libraries Web Style Guide for web authors & developers (June 1, 2006)
• Develop a workflow structure for project lifecycle usability testing for any library project with a web-based interface (June 1, 2006)
• Get WAC and LMT approval of the Style Guide and Usability Testing Lifecycle (June 2006 (2nd Tues: WAC, 3rd Thurs: LMT))
• Usability training for selected staff (to be testing facilitators and local usability experts) (July 31, 2006)
• Training for library web authors and developers on how to apply the Web Style Guide (July 31, 2006)
• Establish the Web Usability Oversight Group (July 31, 2006)
• Present a proposal for establishing a usability lab in the library (July 31, 2006)

Inventory of current UTA Libraries web products

Here's a list I'd started in September:

Inventory of locally developed web-based resources:

Public resources (fully owned and controlled by the library):

• UTA Libraries Online
• UTA Spatial Data Catalog
• UTA Concerts
• Tejano Voices
• Cartographic Connections
• Tutorials (excluding TILT)
• Tests and Measures in the Social Sciences
• Access to Citrix-based resources
• Publications
• Exhibits
  
  

Public resources (3rd party products that are locally customized):

• OneSearch
• Library catalog
• Interlibrary Loan Online
• SFX menu (see in action by searching a library database, e.g. ArticleFirst)

Library staff resources:

• Intranet (pending development)
  
• http://libstaff.uta.edu/

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Added by Gretchen:

Along with the library wide tutorials we need to include the tutorials available from library course pages

10:25 AM, November 04, 2005