Envisioning distributed usability evaluation through a virtual world platform

Ideally, usability evaluation would be part of every software development project. However, it is often overlooked due to cost and time constraints. Usability inspection methods were developed to cut cost and time compared to traditional usability evaluation. However, they still bring with them certain requirements such as having multiple designers involved in the evaluation. Inspection techniques have also been shown to be difficult to learn and teach. With software development projects becoming increasingly distributed, it is ever more difficult to have sufficient participants in a usability inspection and to collaboratively learn the techniques. Motivated by these problems, we developed a novel, prototype environment called INspect-World for distributed usability inspection techniques. INspect-World is built on top of the virtual world platform OpenSimulator. As we investigate usability inspections performed in this environment, we also address ideas of human-centered end-user development in mediated communication contexts.