An empirical evaluation of a usability measurement method in a model driven framework

Abstract

Usability is increasingly considered as a basic determinant of the Interactive Systems (IS) success. An IS that satisfies all the functional requirements can be rejected by end-users if it presents usability problems. Unusable User Interface (UI) is probably the main reason that may lead to the failure in the actual use of an IS. Therefore, several approaches dealing with the evaluation of the user interface usability have been proposed in literature. However, these approaches are focused on the final system and require a large amount of resources to perform the evaluation (end-users, video cameras, questionnaires, etc.). The ability to go back and makes major changes to the design is greatly reduced. It is widely accepted that the evaluation performed at the beginning of the development process is a critical part of ensuring that the product will be used and effective for its intended purpose. In addition, an early usability evaluation would be a significant advantage with regard to saving time and resources. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the integration of the usability issues at an early stage of the development process. A model based approach is presented and empirically evaluated. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.