Testing in the field

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Abstract
It is widely acknowledged in the HCI community that much can be gained from bringing aspects from the field into the lab, and this principle is dominating within usabil- ity groups in Danish Industry. This paper describes three such Danish usability groups and their experiments with turning the tables by using aspects from the lab in the methods applied in the field during field work projects. The context of use plays an important role for a richer understanding of the usability of particular products. As such implications of this is not surprising, neither theo- retically nor empirically.What is interesting, however, is how findings of this type are instantiated in the particular cases; how the three usability groups have used the lab approaches to aid them in working in the field and how the new methods may enhance their existing methodological tool-kit. The message of the paper is that there are a variety of ways in which the theoretically driven, pre-planned, and pre- directed may meet the situated and open-minded, both when usability work is conducted in the field and in the lab.

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