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School of Computing

The following facilities are available:

  1. Usability laboratory
  2. Library

 

Usability laboratory
The School of Computing has a world class usability laboratory.

Usability means making products and systems easier to use and matching them more closely to user needs and requirements. Usability testing involves measuring the performance of typical users (ease of use, task time, user satisfaction) on products, systems or websites. The usability laboratory allows us to support the observation of human-computer interaction. The observer and participant rooms of the laboratory can be seen in the pictures below. The usability laboratory is available for research or for professional usability consulting.

Usability observer room Usability participant room with eye tracker

 

The usability laboratory also consists of a Tobii eye tracker. Eye tracking is a technique to determine eye movement and eye fixation patterns of a person. Eye tracking provides further insight into the user's thought process as they completed a task. The example on the left shows how several participants looked at the UNISA homepage. The red (hot) areas demonstrate where participants fixated the most to find certain information.
Eye tracking heat map of our Unisa homepage  

Library

The University of South Africa (Unisa) has been in existence since 1873. The Library came into being in 1946 when Unisa introduced distance teaching as a mode of tuition. It is one of the largest academic libraries in Africa and also one of the best-endowed with information resources, information technology and expert staff.

The last 50 years have been a period of rapid growth, with the printed book collection now totalling over 1,5 million items. In addition, the Library stocks over 300 000 other items as well as 4 000 current periodical titles. The Library also subscribes to an increasing number of electronic journals (e-journals). Both the e-journals and the growing collection of electronic books (e-books) are available to Unisa students and staff online 24/7 via the Internet, regardless of the user’s physical location. Two subject librarians are available to assist students and staff.

Click here to go to the Library.