The DSL carry out research into the design, development and
deployment of a range of technologies that can be described as Enterprise
Technologies – Decision Support Systems, Enterprise Information Systems,
Enterprise Information Portals, Knowledge Management Systems, Supply Chain
Management Systems and so on. These Enterprise Technologies frequently
make use of high-end technologies such as Constraint Based Reasoning and
Intelligent Agents, Datamining, OLAP/MDDB ets. While the technologies are
high-end, the design of useful enterprise systems usually requires that
these technologies be used interactively – to augment rather than to replace
human users. This means that Enterprise technologies need to be designed
with a specific and intentional human orientation.
Over the last few years, members of the DSL have found that the design
and testing of human oriented systems is becoming more and more important
to their research. To support the testing of Enterprise Technologies, a
team of DSL researchers recently set up a usability testing facility. The
team and the facility are known as ETHOS (Enterprise Technologies and Human
Oriented Systems). The ETHOS team are engaged in developing specific usability
testing methodologies or practices for specific disciplines or from specific
underlying frameworks. At present, we are involved in testing an e-Health
system and the NSW Police Service information portal.
The ETHOS facility is housed in Building 39 at the Wollongong Campus
and has a comprehensive usability test kit. This kit contains a copy of
Camtasia Studio, software which captures both the audio and video output
from a computer and stores it as an AVI file. The AVI file can be reviewed
after usability testing and annotated with comments and timestamps. In
addition, the ETHOS kit contains a video camera, scan converter and VCR
so that a researcher can capture a range of inputs e.g. full screen video
capture, audio capture, ambient environment and any combination of these.
We'll be adding more info about our equipment, procedures and projects
soon.
In the meantime, or more information about ETHOS, contact Peter Hyland
via phyland@uow.edu.au
Back to my home page
,.Enterprise
Technologies and Human Oriented Systems (ETHOS)