User Evaluation Part 1- University of Sri Jayawardhanapura

The main evaluation process of our concept, initiated at University of Sri Jayawardhanapura, yesterday. According to the plan the system would be introduced to 5 students , completely and partially blind per day, for two days. The evaluation happens in qualitative and quantitative manner. The quantitative evaluation is handled by introducing two systems with similar functionality, one with positional layout information and the second one without it. The process is expected to show some distinct time, error rates and request for help rates. The non positional system is completely linear: uses the top and down arrow keys, and has no positional information involved. The other system is composed of the qualities we have described earlier.

The evaluation began at 9 45 A.M at the blind personal's computer lab in the university. There was a computer booth with a simple computer, which served our purpose very well; and least disturbed other students. This was converted into our experiment machine

figure 1

The setup is shown in figure 1, with the original pc on left and the environment setup by us in the left. Two machine towers, speaker boxes and another box were used to elevate the top speakers approximately giving similar distance to the top and the bottom rows. The right side speaker tended to fall due to the weight of the hanging wire, so two stones were dropped into the speaker box, so that it would be balanced. The bottom speakers were kept on PC's original system tower and the computer table. We took a photograph of the location before changing and the booth was prapared exactly as it was, according to the image taken. This is important because blind people find their stuff imagining that they had a exact location, or that they were in the same place they left them. Ex the head set should be always kept on top of the system unit.
Exact information regarding the evaluation is unavailable with me as documents, so I will note down an overall idea of the process. We introduced the system to three male and two female students. One male student was completely blind while the other two were partially blind. One female student was blind and other was partially blind. The second female student mentioned has lost here sight recently. With out evaluating the documented data I feel that there is no real advantage regarding speed and efficiency in introducing the positional system. The experiment had so many limitations in selecting the sample. Some students had extraordinary capabilities. They showed lower time in using the positional or the non positional system. Since the sample size available is limited, there issues are unavoidable.
Most students identified the positioning of the objects in space. Every one exept one said that this was an important addition. (It was raining out side when he used the system, so we are not sure he clearly felt the positioning and layout information). Almost every one under stood the table layout structure and the comparison structure of data. Most of them used the term table or "වගුව" to describe what they heard (a table exactly). Overall in my openion the concept is worth enough to be investigated further. There are limitations in sound; but similarly there are limitations in vision as well. It is impossible to read a book or a slide when the line are cramped, just as the sounds. The evaluation ended at around 3 30 in the evening. And we hope to complete our sample of 10 tomorrow at the same place at the same time.