A User Interface Design Method based on Quantitative Evaluation of Consistency in Device Operation

Digitized electrical products have many functions, and these user interface specifications have become large scale. Therefore, in short development period, it is a problem that time for usability evaluation is insufficient. In this paper, we propose a user interface design method that can evaluate consistency in device operation, by simple processes. Features of the proposed method are to use similarity of functions or interactions, as software metrics. The similarities are calculated from the design information, and are analyzed by using an agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC). As a result of the AHC, functions or interactions are classified into several groups, and their consistencies are able to be judged. This is an automatic evaluation method that does not require manpower. Thus, unlike conventional usability evaluation, efficiency of the design work can be expected. As a result of evaluating user interfaces for digital camera by using the method, this technique was able to identify the points to be corrected in the interactions. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.