Graphical controls based environment for user interface evaluation

Abstract

For more than two decades, the HCI community has elaborated numerous tools for user interface evaluation. Although the related tools are wide, the evaluation remains a difficult task. This paper presents a new approach for user interface evaluation. The proposed evaluation process focuses on utility and usability as software quality factors. It is based on the UI ergonomic quality inspection as well as the analysis and the study of the Human-Computer interaction. The proposed approach is mainly based on graphic controls dedicated to the user interface evaluation. These controls have, on the one hand, the role to compose graphically the interfaces. On the other hand, they contribute to the UI evaluation through integrated mechanisms. The evaluation is structured into two phases. The first consists of a local self-evaluation of the graphical controls according to a set of ergonomic guidelines. This set is specified by the evaluator. The second allows an electronic informer to estimate the interaction between the user interface (graphically composed by the evaluation based controls) and the user. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.