Can Cognitive Modeling Improve Usability Testing and Rapid Prototyping?
Erik M. Altmann, Axel Cleeremans, Christian D. Schunn, Wayne D. Gray · Psychology Press eBooks · 2001
Rapid prototyping is frequently used to design interface systems for commercial software. The goal is to rapidly iterate a cycle of creating, evaluating, and redesigning, to produce an intuitive, easy to use interface. In this paper we discuss how usability testing, a popular means of evaluation for rapid prototyping, could be augmented by testing simulated users. The simulated user is not a new idea; it has its origins in GOMS modeling (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983), and has also been explored using cognitive architectures (e.g., Gray, 2000; Howes & Young, 1996) such as ACT-R (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) and SOAR (Newell, 1990). However, not much attention has been paid to integrating simulated users into rapid prototyping and usability testing.