When most people hook up cameras and remote control devices to monitor and record every aspect of someone’s computer usage, it’s creepy. When Rose-Hulman Computer Science/Software Engineering students do it, though, it’s a breakthrough study in usability.

The Computer Science and Software Engineering department dedicated a new usability section on Wednesday. The usability lab, which allows students in one area to observe usage patterns of a computer user in a separate room, is meant to aid junior and senior computer science and software engineering students in developing easy-to-use products and learning about human/computer interaction.

“[The lab is] very interesting,” said Tori Wenger, senior engineering manager at Rockwell Collins. “I like all of the monitoring that they can do, both in just tracking of the movements and also response time and all of the other intricacies.”

Wenger, a 2004 Rose-Hulman alum and current co-chair of Rockwell Collins’s Rose-Hulman recruiting committee, played an integral role in getting the Computer Science department the money to build the lab.

The process began over two years ago, when Software Engineering professors Sriram Mohan and Steve Chenoweth began discussing how they could improve the software engineering program.

“One thing that came up was usability,” Mohan said. “[We said,] maybe we should go ahead and set up a usability lab.”

In September 2008, Wenger’s grant committee allocated $47,000 to Rose-Hulman and the Software Engineering department for the construction of the lab. The lab was set up for the 2009 spring quarter.

But Mohan wasn’t done; he and Chenoweth decided to “expand the notion of usability,” settling eventually on further exploration in the subject of human/computer interaction. The pair settled on multitouch technologies for their next target.

Multitouch is a new way of interacting with a computer that explores the possibility of tracking multiple finger touches on a surface simultaneously. Recent models of MacBook and some PC laptops have implemented multitouch technologies, but the concept remains largely on the fringe of mainstream computing.

Mohan wrote a second grant application to Rockwell Collins, and a few months ago was granted money to purchase a Microsoft Surface table, a roughly 4×2' touch-sensitive table that can respond to an arbitrary number of touches on its surface at the same time.

The usability lab and the Surface table are now available for all Computer Science and Software Engineering students to use, and department professors are hoping they’ll spark new thoughts within the discipline.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Shawn Bohner, software engineering professor, said. “Having [Surface and the lab] available to our students is going to cause ideas all over the place.”

Wednesday’s lab dedication underscored the hard work Rockwell Collins and Rose-Hulman have put in together over the years. RHIT is one of Rockwell Collins’ seven “trusted partnership” schools, where the corporation spends most of their grant and scholarship money; in turn, Rose-Hulman has over 100 former students who now work at Rockwell Collins.

“Here’s the thought process: we need to have this relationship with companies,” Bohner said. “We have common goals; we trust them for innovation; we provide good students and good employees. They provide things like co-ops and labs like [the usability lab] to make the education better. There’s a really synergistic relationship we’ve established here.”

Wenger is equally enthusiastic about the long-term prospects of the RHIT/Rockwell Collins relationship, and the positive aspects of the usability lab on the CS/SE program.

“The advantage of the usability lab is that we have the opportunity to work with students over many years and see many students pass through and use [the lab],” Wenger said. “For us to have an opportunity to influence the program in a way that would allow our potential hires to have exposure to [usability] was pretty key.”

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