An Automated Usability Evaluation Method Based on Structural Compatibility of Information Resource Distribution and Screen Transition Design with User Tasks

Abstract

This paper proposes an automated expert review method to estimate the usability of information terminals where users use different operation screens depending on their progress of work. The proposed method evaluates interface designs from two points of view. One is a distributed cognition view looking at the compatibility of information resources distribution and examines whether individual screens provide just enough amount of knowledge and information for the user task. The other concerns the compatibility of transition structure and examines whether screen transitions are consistent with the flows of work to be performed by the user. Two different experiments were conducted to test the proposed method using information terminals whose design differed in their information resources distribution and screen transition structure. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can generate usability scores close to the participant users’ feeling of use when the weight for the two compatibility aspects are adjusted appropriately.