ABSTRACT
An iterative cycle of usability testing is often employed to evaluate a product for its strengths and weaknesses. Video offers objective, quantitative, temporal, and motion-based information that would be very difficult and tedious to obtain through direct observation. Multimedia Video Task Analysis (MVTA™) is a software tool for analyzing observational data from video recordings that are both qualitative and quantitative, facilitates the analysis, and offers features that would be difficult to accomplish without a computer. MVTA offers flexibility in maintaining observational records and cataloging events from video recordings that can easily accommodate intentional and unexpected changes in the analyses. The software can extend the observational task analysis by providing time-based and posture-based data used to identify difficulties and barriers related to medical device accessibility. The richness of the qualitative and quantitative data adds a great deal of information to the iterative design process, which can help developers produce better and more usable products, and obtain a better understanding of the user and environments in which they are used.
