A model for usability testing in challenging environments

Remote software usability testing has been studied for over two decades. Yet, many of the existing testing methods are not ideal for field testing in challenging environments typical to military and emergency operations and contexts. In this paper we introduce a model and a messaging framework that allow remote usability tests to be run easily in the real work context of the users. We also introduce a proof-of-concept implementation of the model and show how the model can be integrated to an existing user interface of a military communication system. To verify our model, we pilot the test set-up on real end users of the system.