Experiences with the Evaluation of Cve Applications

We present our experience with a usability evaluation of two prototype CVE applications being developed by the COVEN project. The applications are a teleconferencing system aimed at future business users of CVEs, and a holiday planning environment for the use of the general public. Our concerns in the evaluations were three fold: to refine the design of these applications, to gain further understanding of the component technologies of CVEs, and to reflect upon methodologies for evaluation. We report upon two main threads of investigation: a usability inspection of the applications, and a series of network trials. We discuss some important outstanding issues for the system designer, and suggest several guidelines for the application builder. Finally we reflect upon the methodologies chosen and suggest a focus for future CVE evaluations.