At the IA Summit, I saw an impressive demo of UsersFirst. It's a portable usability lab, and the slickest one I've seen. It consists of a Mac laptop, the software and an iCam camera. The software lets you connect to any other laptop (say, a Windows laptop that runs a prototype), and records pixel perfect what's going on there. It also records the user (with the iCam). And it includes logging software that's timestamped. Expect this to make some waves when it comes out of beta in a few months.

The guy who's creating the software has been working on it for years. I talked to him for a while about pricing models, and requirements.

There is a huge market for this if it is done right. I'm surprised nobody else has gone for this. And I'm waiting for a Windows version. Who's going to make one?

# Mar 5, 2004