As we mentioned earlier, Sprint is currently hosting reporters from BGR and four other publications at its massive headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas. We gave you a tour of Sprint’s grounds earlier this morning, and now we’re happy to bring you a rare glimpse inside the Sprint Usability Lab here at the carrier’s campus. This building houses various facilities and equipment used to perform some of the product testing that helps shape the future of Sprint’s portfolio. User groups are brought in for a wide range of focus studies and device testing, and we were shown a variety of equipment Sprint uses to perform the tests. One such device, which can be seen in the last three images in the gallery below, is an eye tracker that allows Sprint’s usability experts to view and later analyze exactly what a user looks at while handling a device. We were shown a demo where the user handled a feature phone and viewed the device’s UI on the attached monitor. As the user flipped through the device’s interface, the equipment was able to track — in real time — exactly where the user was looking on the device’s interface. This type of study can then help Sprint build user interfaces and experiences that are arranged logically in accordance with user behavior, ultimately resulting in a more user-friendly experience. We have plenty more to come but in the meantime, enjoy the gallery below.
