Development of a usability evaluation method based on finger movement

Abstract

Current techniques for usability evaluation are costly, timeconsuming, subjective, and often require operation logs, which are difficult to obtain from electrical products. To overcome these limitations, we developed a usability evaluation method that is applicable for various types of interfaces and involves extracting the video-recorded fingertip movements of a user during operation through image processing, and then evaluating usability based on several measurable parameters. Specifically, users' hand movements are first video recorded during the operation of either an actual product or a reproduced interface on a touch screen, and then operation time, and the distance and patterns of the moving locus, including stationary time and frequency of directional changes, are then extracted using image processing. To evaluate the usability of the interface, the ratio between novice and expert users for the parameters of operation time and distance traveled by the moving locus is used. Here, we conducted a comparative usability experiment using facsimile interfaces of two different manufacturers to evaluate the performance our method. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.