Patrick Harms

Automated Usability Evaluation of Graphical User Interfaces as well as Augmented and Virtual Reality

Usability of software is crucial for its acceptance by users. Especially nowadays, where alternatives are often close at hand, the usability of software can be a discriminator between success and failure of a project. From the view of software developers, we are working on techniques to automate usability evaluation of software based on its usage. This allows people, who are usually not well trained in usability engineering, e.g., computer scientists, to anyway consider usability in their software projects and beyond. Our corresponding research projects are:

• Automated Usability Evaluation of Graphical User Interfaces as well as Augmented and Virtual Reality
• AutoQUEST - Automated Quality Engineering of Event-driven Software

Using Augmented and Virtual Reality for Usability Testing of Technical Consumer Products

Any technical consumer product, from coffee machine to a car, has a usability, which should be as high as possible to satisfy the users. This usability is mainly influenced by the interaction elements offered by the products, such as physical buttons with pictograms. During the development of the products, all details of these interaction elements need to be defined and their usability needs to be assessed and improved. But due to a decreasing time-to-market as well as limited resources for quality assurance, such assessments are done rather seldom, nowadays. Therefore, we consider using augmented and virtual reality as a possibility for formative usability evaluation of product prototypes. Our related research project for this topic is:

• Formative Usability Evaluation of Product Prototypes Utilizing Augmented and Virtual Reality

Open Project and Thesis Topics

In the above mentioned research areas on usability evaluation as well as augmented and virtual reality, we offer diverse topics for research projects as well as bachelor and master theses. The concrete list of topics varies depending on the current state of the research and corresponding next steps. Please contact me, if you would like to do a project or thesis work in this context and I can provide you with more details.