Building up usability-engineering capability by improving access to automated usability evaluation

For the automated evaluation of interactive software systems a variety of techniques exists. Different backgrounds, various concepts for representation and processing make it difficult for developers (and users) to identify the proper technique for automated evaluation with respect to acknowledged usability principles, such as the suitability for the task. In order to facilitate the selection and application of automated usability-evaluation techniques, we introduce a template for structured documentation and reflection. Enriching traditional schemes it addresses the relationship between usability principles and parameters used for processing. We consider the relation of usability principles to processing schemes to be of major importance, since it not only facilitates the communication between users and designers, but also reveals ways how qualitative attributes can be mapped on to operational structures. If we could utilize that information for design, e.g., for automatically checking specifications or prototypes, interactive-system development could be improved significantly. The proposed template stems from our work in the EU COST action 294 MAUSE (www.cost294.org) targeting towards quality assessment of usability-evaluation methods.