OSM: an ontology-based approach to usability evaluation
ANN E. BLANDFORD, Thomas Green · 1997
An Ontological Sketch Model (OSM) is a structured but informal representation of the ontology --- the essential underlying structure --- of a system, forming a basis for usability assessment. Our primary aim is to develop an approach that is usable and that yields useful results. We present a preliminary ontology for the OSM, based on descriptions of the entities in the domain of application, actions that the user can perform, and relationships (such as "constrains" and "affects") between entities. Initial studies into the usefulness and usability of OSMs indicate that the approach is promising, but that further work is needed on developing more comprehensive training materials. Introduction Usability is a central concern in the design of interactive systems. However, the most extensively used approaches to incorporating user concerns in the design lifecycle (e.g. use of guidelines (Smith & Mosier, 1986) or heuristic evaluation (Nielsen, 1994)) are informal and heavily reliant on cra...