The user testing toolset: a decision support system to aid the evaluation of assistive technology products Andree Woodcock a, 1 , Simon Fielden b and Richard Bartlett a a Centre of Excellence in Product and Automotive Design, Department of Industrial Design, Coventry School of Art and Design Coventry University, Coventry , UK b Health Design Technology Institute, Coventry University, Coventry, UK Abstract. Developers of assistive technology products need to ensure that their offerings meet the requirements of end users, and that usability issues have been discovered prior to manufacture. This may be difficult for SMEs (Small Medium Enterpris- es) who may lack the necessary skills and resources required to plan and conduct an evaluation. To assist SMEs in the assistive technology market, a stand alone, decision support system was developed to assist in the planning and evaluation of their prod- ucts, taking into account the resources available, nature of the product being developed and stage of the design process. The responses given by the designer to 40 multiple choice questions are matched against a database of 42 research methods. The methods achieving the highest score in relation to all questions are displayed as the final output. The paper describes the de- velopment of the User Testing Toolset (UTT), including the additional functionality provided to ensure that the evaluation methods were correctly matched and weighted to the responses. Keywords: research methods, usability testing 1 Corresponding author: A.Woodcock@coventry.ac.uk 1. Introduction This paper describes the development of a com- puter based system to support SMEs in product evaluation. Although developed for the assistive technology sector, it is expected that the User Testing Toolset (UTT) will benefit a wider group of design- ers. The UTT was developed as part of the Technology Strategy Board/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded, i-DEAL project. The academic partners at Coventry University worked with SMEs at the cutting edge of new product development in the areas of assisted living and telemedicine. The overall aims of the project were to develop generic tools and processes to assist SMEs to ensure that their products meet end user needs. User evaluation is one part of the process, and is very demanding in this sector. Typical challenges include a lack of undertanding of the methods that can be employed to conduct evaluations, lack of resources, access to end users and the required expertise to apply evaluation techniques. Additionally design teams are typically transferring technology to a new market (as in the case of telemedicine) which is uncertain about its purchases (as evidenced by the slow up take of assistive technology), and a user groups which has multiple disabilities. As part of the project the academic partners assisted SMEs in the early evaluation of a number of products. These evaluations led to significant design changes, with at least one product not being taken forward because of feedback from a focus goup. Such decisions are vital to get right given the levels of investment required and resources available in SMEs. As the project progressed it was evident that there was a need to formalise and present assisitve technology evaluation techniques and methods in a way which was accessible to designers and Work 41 (2012) 1381-1386 DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0328-1381 IOS Press 1381 1051-9815/12/$27.50 © 2012 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved