I’ve set up a couple of usability labs in my time, so I’ll give you some of my advice/lessons learned in that space.
First the practical – get lots of wall space. I mean LOTS of wall space. Almost all the experience designers I have worked with love to use wall space to throw up mood boards, draft concepts, sketches, etc. Also wall space is ideal for affinity exercises – and to that end get lots of stickies, markers and white poster paper. Optimally you would have rolls of poster paper that you can mount towards the ceiling and then use to capture notes or a place to keep your stickies when you do brainstorming or analysis sessions.
You may also want to get dedicated project rooms, so you can keep all your work on the walls without having to move it from place to place. I’ve had to do analysis of data that was gathered through ethnographic research over a week-long period and switching rooms during that exercise was really frustrating and disrupted our workflow.
Now, hardware: use laptops, not desktops for your designers. The portability supports team members better. If you want to explore with next gen devices, get a touch computer like the ones HP has. If you really want to explore the space, get an XBox and a Playstation 3 and play with their new gestural devices/games. They are also useful for unwinding after the work day is done – as a famous starship captain once said, “The more complex the mind the more the need for play.”
When it comes to usability testing, if you can set up a permanent lab, do so. The need for a two-way mirror is debatable, with all the teleconference software that exists. I personally think that building in wall or ceiling cameras and microphones is overkill – the participants know they are being recorded during a test, so why hide it? Also overkill, in my opine and experience, is eye-tracking software and hardware. A good facilitator or observer will be able to get the same or better insight than eye-tracking would… It may not have the level of specificity that the software would provide, but I think the data it provides is usually not very actionable.
If you are doing mobile design (and you should be) then get a variety of devices and hire someone who can develop in that space… There are ways to get designs on the devices without coding but you may want to have the option to have more interactive mockups to test with. Get a monopod to lock a camera on a desk that can point down and record users using the device during testing (the smaller the camera the better).
And when it comes to usability testing software, there’s a lot of great programs out there. The one I prefer is Morae, from Techsmith http://www.techsmith.com/
When it comes to design software, I love Omnigraffle for the Mac http://www.omnigroup.com/ to do mockups, flow diagrams, mind maps, whathaveyou. I also love Axure RP http://axure.com/ to do designs and it generates functional prototypes you can use for testing. It’s available for both Windows and OS X.
Finally, set up a lending library and invest in some of the best books in design – I’m sure there’s other questions and answers around what these may be on Quora, so I’d consult those for advice.