Designing touch surfaces to help the visually impaired operate home appliances

Heating a beverage is a common microwave task. Though there are a variety of methods to heat a beverage, this test scenario requires the test participant to select a seven button sequence to run the microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds at power level 7. A final button, Cancel, is added at the end of the sequence.

The buttons:

Time Cook --- 1 --- 3 --- 0 --- Power Level --- 7 --- Start --- Cancel

What is recorded

--- timestamp of each button press

--- label of each button press

Data analyzed

--- Successful completion of the scenario. Success = correctly entered the button sequence.

--- Time to complete the scenario. Only for successful scenarios, time = timeStamp(Cancel) - timeStamp(Time Cook)

Comments

We wanted as much coverage of the control buttons as possible while providing a realistic scenario. The 3 and 7 buttons are not commonly used and provide a good opportunity for testing the different overlay keypads. The Cancel button was added at the end of the sequence because it is a common button, plus it provides a conceptual ending to the scenario.