Setting-up networking environments in human factors laboratory

摘要

Efficiency and effectiveness are both basic aspects of telecommunications systems and services that require study and evaluation prior to any implementation in the field. Outcomes and findings in this area must be reached through the full inclusion of potential users in the experimental process of evaluation and testing of human factors requirements, inside an environmental context very close to the real one furnished by the broadband network and its related processing potentialities. A possible approach to examine these issues has been found by designing and setting up a powerful tool able to study both functions and situations of multimedia networking. This tool is the human factors laboratory created at Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. It can emulate by a functional representation the main operating conditions of some new telecommunications services (e.g., teleconferencing, videotelephony, multipoint tele-teaching, etc.) for testing and evaluation purposes. This paper briefly shows how a communicative structure and apparatus can be set up in order to identify guide-lines for both designing and prototyping multipoint communication systems and services. An interactive context for tele-teaching is herein given as example.