Graphical controls based environment for user interface evaluation

Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Graphical controls based environment for userinterface evaluation

Selem CHARFI, Abdelwaheb TRABELSI, Houcine EZZEDINEand Christophe KOLSKI

Laboratoire d’Automatique, de Mecanique, et d’Informatique industrielles etHumaines LAMIH CNRS 8201

Raisonnement Automatique et Interaction Homme-Machine

Toulouse. October 31th, 2012

4th international conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Content

1 Introduction

2 UI Evaluation Tools

3 Evaluation Based Controls

4 Conclusion and Future work

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Introduction

UI evaluation is :

essential for interactive systems validation and test [Nielsen, 94].

important to create effective and usable interfaces and screens[Galitz, 08].

UI evaluation essentially aims at :

identifying potential UI use problems leading to use problems[Nielsen, 93].

improving UI acceptability [Zhang et al., 99].

establishing comparison between several design alternatives[Mayhew, 99].

protecting user from erroneous actions (data lost, undesirablesituations) [Rubin, 08].

improving systems’ efficiency[Galitz, 08].

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

UI Evaluation Tools

Many works exist (tools, methods, technics, etc.). The UIevaluation tools are so numerous. Although there are manydifficulties :

Ergonomic Guidelines exploitation is difficult to establish[Keith, 05].

The evaluation results are difficult to analyze and to interpret[Charfi et al., 11].

UI evaluation is generally a neglected process by manydesigners [Grislin and Kolski, 96].

The evaluation results can vary from a method to another oneand from an evaluator to the other for the same UI [Nielsen, 93].

etc.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

UI Evaluation Tools

An UI evaluation existing tools study revealed that [Charfi et al.] :

1 The majority of them are used at the final system designphase (Test Phase).

2 UI evaluation tools should be easier and simpler to beestablished to encourage designers to proceed to theevaluation.

3 Most of existing tools are based on only one evaluationmethod (Electronic Informer, Ergonomic Guideline inspection,questionnaire, etc).

4 Most of the existing tools focus on a single aspect for theevaluation (static UI display, the system functional kernel,etc).

5 Most of existing tool offers automated capture and analyzephases. The UI improvement suggestions and use problems arehandled manually by the evaluator.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Global Overview

Purpose :

1 automating UI evaluation process.

2 supporting the evaluation process since early system designphases.

3 couple between Design and Evaluation phases.

4 simplifying evaluation process that design can proceed to iteasily.

Concept : Integrate evaluation mechanism into graphical control.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Evaluation Based Controls

Evaluation Based Controls

1 Controls dedicated to UI Usability Inspection (Static UIdisplay).

2 Controls dedicated to UI Utility Inspection (Interactionbetween User and the GUI).

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Evaluation controls dedicated to Usability Inspection

”It may be 100 times more costly to proceed for UIimprovement at a late stage that early one” [Nielsen, 94].

The proposed controls ”evaluate” themselves according to aset of EG : they check their coherency according to EG.

The EG are defined into XML files by the evaluator into XMLfiles through a tool entitled ”Guideline Manager”.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Evaluation controls dedicated to Utility Inspection

The evaluation process :consist in comparing between different actions sequences.

Planned action sequence : Referential Model.User actions sequence : Object Model.

is based on CTT notation for task modeling [Paterno, 97].is based on these controls and an Electronic Informer.

They have a client-server architecture.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Evaluation controls dedicated to Utility Inspection

Roles :

Evaluation ControlsCommunicating interaction data to the electronic informer :

elementary action execution time ;action type (button click, check-list select, etc.) ;associated form (the interface containing the graphicalcontrol) ;graphical control text ;control type (button, text-box, label, combo-box, etc.) and,IP machine address.

The Electronic Informer

Assist the evaluator to generate Referential Model ;Capture interaction data ;Generate Object Model ;Comparing between Referential and Object Model and,Establish comparison statistics.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

The Electronic Informer

The EI is structured following a modular architecture

1 Referential model generator ;

2 Evaluated object model generator ;

3 Confrontation and,

4 Statistics generator.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

(1) Referential Model Generator

This module is used to elaborate a description of the tasksthat are executed by the user during the test phase.

The task is expressed through its sub-tasks using CTTnotation

The task trees are specified by the evaluator.

The evaluator associates through this module the elementaryactions tasks to the task model in order to generateReferential Model.

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(2) Object Model Generator

This module is used to :

capture the user actions sequence while interacting with theUI and,store these captured data for the confrontation process.

Note : The interaction sequence is realized separately for each task.

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(3) Confrontation Module

This module is used to compare between Referential andObject model.This comparison is elaborated in order to detect missing,repetitive, useless and erroneous actions.

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(4) Statistics Generator

The Statistics Generator module propose to the evaluator :

task execution rate ;

tasks and sub-tasks execution average and,

the comparison between the two models.

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Conclusion

UI Evaluation

is the object of numerous researches.remains a difficult task.

A contribution for UI early evaluation to obtain useful andusable UI.

The proposed UI evaluation approach limits :

Utility inspection controls do not identify clearly the designproblemsDifficulties to exploit EI provided statistics by the EIThe proposed usability inspection controls take intoconsideration only simple EG

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Future work

1 Exploit web services to provide better operability forevaluators ;

2 Couple between the two control families to get controlinspecting both utility and usability ;

3 Conceive ”Intelligent” controls that handle usability and utilityproblems and,

4 Express Evaluation result using evaluation standards (EARL,RDL, CIF, etc.).

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Introduction UI Evaluation Tools Evaluation Based Controls Conclusion and Future work

Graphical controls based environment for userinterface evaluation

Selem CHARFI, Abdelwaheb TRABELSI, Houcine EZZEDINEand Christophe KOLSKI

Laboratoire d’Automatique, de Mecanique, et d’Informatique industrielles etHumaines LAMIH CNRS 8201

Raisonnement Automatique et Interaction Homme-Machine

Toulouse. October 31th, 2012

4th international conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering

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