Ideal: A Software Tool to Evaluate Interface Usability
Stacey L. Ashlund, Deborah Hix · Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting · 1992
This paper reports on the design, prototype implementation, and formative evaluation of a software tool—IDEAL (Interface Design Environment and Analysis Lattice). IDEAL integrates usability engineering techniques and behavioral task representations with a graphical hierarchy of user tasks to support formative evaluation of an evolving user interface. Representative users of IDEAL—interface designers and evaluators—participated in two phases of formative evaluation of IDEAL. Empirical evaluation showed IDEAL to be useful as an automated tool for managing the interrelated tasks of user interface development, including interaction design, usability specification, creation of benchmark tasks, and formative evaluation, that are currently performed manually.