Project Ernestine: Validating a GOMS Analysis for Predicting and Explaining Real-World Task Performance

Abstract

Project Ernestine served a pragmatic as well as a scientific goal: to compare the worktimes of telephone company toll and assistance operators on two different workstations and to validate a GOMS analysis for predicting and explaining real-world performance. Contrary to expectations, GOMS predicted and the data confirmed that performance with the proposed workstation was slower than with the current one. Pragmatically, this increase in performance time translates into a cost of almost $2 million a year to NYNEX. Scientifically, the GOMS models predicted performance with exceptional accuracy. © 1993, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.