90 percent of everything : Usability Blog

Written by Harry Brignull

Back in May, I wrote a short post on how to make your own iPhone usability testing sled for £5. It’s pretty straightforward: cut a piece of acrylic to the right size and bend it to shape using a toaster. It’s no big deal, but it’s nice to see that other people have found this tip useful – Kirk Henry, of Lokion Interactive recently tweeted some pics of a pimped-up red version they’ve made:

The holes (for cables / attaching cameras) and the logo detail are nice touches, done using ponoko.com. If you haven’t tried Ponoko yet, you should – it’s a very neat laser cutting service – a bit like moo.com but using the laser from Goldfinger instead of printers. You basically just provide them with an EPS or SVG of your design, using different coloured lines to indicate whether you want the material to be cut-through or etched. They provide materials like acrylic, wood, stainless steel, etc, and mail it back to you.

Above you can see the Lokion sled in action. You can see camera size is a bit of an issue. Personally, I use the Logitech Webcam C905, but it’s still a little bulky and expensive. If anyone has any camera tips, post them in the comments please!

Oh, and for recording for two cameras simultaneously using free software, check out either Jon Howarth’s or Belén Barros Pena & Bernard Tyers‘ instructions.

Related posts:

• Mobile Usability Testing Tip: Recording from Two Webcams
• Quick tip: make your own iPhone usability testing sled for £5
• Anatomy of a Hardware Usability Testing Rig
• Cheap and Free Alternatives to Morae: Usability Testing Software.
• Reviewing WhatUsersDo.com: a UK-based remote unmoderated qualitative usability testing platform