Dealing with usability in model-driven development method

Abstract

Usability is crucial for the acceptance of Interactive Systems (IS) by end users. Unusable User Interfaces (UI) are probably the main reason why IS fail in actual use. This can explains the increasing number of Usability Evaluation Method proposed in the literature. However, most of these methods are focused on the final product which greatly reduced the ability to go back and makes major changes. Recently, and due to the increasing interest in Model Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm, the conceptual models have become the backbone of the IS development process. Therefore, evaluating the usability from the conceptual models would be a significant advantage with regard to saving time and resources. The present chapter proposes an early usability evaluation method that is based on conceptual models. The usability evaluation can be automated taking as input the conceptual models that represent the system abstractly. As an output it provides a usability report which contains the detected usability problems. The usability report is analyzed in order to identify the source of problems and suggest changes in the development process.