His Comments!

It was our second day at Sri Jayawardenapura University. As discussed on the very first day we were planned to do our second pilot test with Chanaka Sir, who is conducting computer training for visually impaired persons in the University. In our 1st discussion he asked us to show him the system, before start the actual evaluation. If he experience it first it is easier to explain to his students.

The system was setup in a cubicle inside Channa Sir's office. The speaker positioning was vertical as decided after Asoka Sir's experiment.

First gave him a brief description about our interface with positioned audio.

Secondly some tasks were demonstrated by Kanishka according to our preprepared evaluation plan. Then he was asked to do the same tasks on his own. This pilot test was well performed as desired, than all the other pilot sessions with both blind and non blind persons.

During the evaluation it is observed that Chanaka Sir is the most fastest learner of the system so far. He grabbed the concept quickly and was able to traverse using arrow keys to the correct positions. In the second task he was managed to traverse to the exact position without any confusions or aids.

Following are some of the HCI related comments gathered during the pilot test;

• Notification for num lock ON or OFF for use of numerical key pad, since it is used as shortcut keys when num lock OFF
• Concerned about positions of the words which has typed, in our applications user inputs are not positioned, they just readout from all 4 speakers
• Notification messages such as "Successfully Registered! Your information...." can be demonstrated after each input event
• Enter button can be used to focus and come out from a text box
• Add a background audio clip during page loading, to indicate the user has to be wait until the next page appears, or else at the beginning can play audio clips such as "Please wait" and after page loads "Welcome ....! (page name)"

Finally he gave some great advancements for audio based interfaces; this can be an extension for existing screen readers (JAWS) and generalize to all applications. He is really glad to use this new technology in teaching his students (both blind and non blind), since he can point out the place of a particular element. i.e. in MS word he can say "goto 'Home' on the top left corner.

This can be considered as the best and the most successful pilot test we have done so far!