Usability Test in a Virtual Environment: A Case Study Based on a Mining Machine

Put During the concept phase of product development, designers must evaluate complex engineering scenarios. The usability test is an effective method to find out the design correctness regarding to use of the certain technical solutions. The commonly used usability test is performed on the physical mock-ups, and it is expensive test for new designed machines. Performance predictions and functional evaluations are possible long before real prototype test results become available. However, with the rise in model complexity, data quantity, computing performance, and accuracy, we increasingly find ourselves lacking the tools, methods, and metaphors to deal with the information generated. One of the most important applications of virtual reality (VR) technology has been for requirements analysis using virtual prototypes. The appeal of using VR is from saving the cost of physical mock-ups and prototypes, especially for complex systems. The paper presents a Virtual Reality (VR) technique as environment for the 3D model of the new designed systems and performs the usability tests to improve the designed system performance. The paper presents and investigates the results of applying usability test in a virtual environment for a sample mining machine.