Software and product designers regularly wrestle with the usability of their creations in user studies laboratories. The laboratories themselves, however, often languish for lack of the same scrutiny with respect to their own usability. In this article, we trace our efforts toward making a truly usable user studies laboratory. Our lab serves many purposes and many individuals, each requiring a slightly different configuration of equipment. The challenge was to design a user studies environment that would provide 'instant' configurations, obviating the need for users to connect components by hand. Toward this end, we purchased equipment that could be controlled directly or indirectly by a computer and designed the wiring plant to all run through a matrix switcher, also under computer control. Upon this technology, we designed a user interface in HyperCard that automatically configures the lab and provides the interface controls required for any one of a set of specific pre-designed tasks that the user may select. The interface also permits the user to customize and save sets of configurations and controls by copying and pasting among cards and also to create novel configurations by manipulating the matrix controller's software switches one by one.
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