A Novel Experimental Equipment and Methods Using an Online Video Conference Tool to Collect Human Subjects Data Without Physical Interaction

Abstract

There have been suggestions of remote usability test and experiment methods to collect human performance data while interacting with prototypes. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has increased the necessity of remote testing methods due to constraints on interacting with participants in the same location with physical contacts. The present study introduces a convenient and effective remote experiment method using a commercial video conference application. While an experimental prototype is running in an experimenter’s computer, a participant in another place can access and manipulate the prototype to complete given experimental tasks using the remote-control functions in conference application. A case study to investigate the effects of text features in vehicle infotainment systems on driver’s performance validated the utility of the suggesting method. Even though the method includes limitations compared to conventional lab experiments, the advantage seems overwhelming to the disadvantages when the remote data collection experiment is inevitably required. It is expected that the suggested method can be used with some modifications based on context of each experiment.