Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction Humain-Machine

Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction
Humain-Machine

Automated Evaluation of Menu by Guidelines Review

In Proceedings of RO-CHI International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. pages 11-21. 2016.

Sarah Bouzit, Gaëlle Calvary, Denis Chene, Jean Vanderdonckt

Abstract

This paper presents ERGOSIM, a software that automatically evaluate the design of menu bars, pull-down menus, and sub-menus of a graphical user interface by reviewing usability guidelines related to menu design. In this method, a menu design is parsed against the definition of usability guidelines in order to detect potential usability problems manifested by any occurrence where a guidelines is not respected. Four evaluation strategies are enabled depending on the end user’s preferences: an active strategy initiated by the system, a passive strategy initiated by the designer, a mixed strategy collaboratively initiated by both the designer and the system, and a strategy by conceptual units based on the domain. From an initial corpus of 312 usability guidelines compiled from different sources on menu design, a final knowledge base of 58 implemented usability guidelines has been obtained for automatic evaluation. By examining how each usability guideline for menu design is expressed, we discuss to what extent such guidelines could be automated in an automated process by guidelines review.