An AHP-Based Approach in the Early Design Evaluation via Usability Goals

The usability engineering process has indicated the importance of setting usability criteria and a measureable level for important goals. Without goal-oriented practice, novice or inexperienced designers do not know how to deliver usable and quality system and would unreasonably follow what they have seen or used before. This paper presents a quantitative basis for selecting and prioritizing design goals or usability goals, thereafter selecting the best prototype relative to the usability goals. The proposed method consists of two main phase, namely: the prioritizing goals phase and the user evaluation phase. The objective of the prioritizing goal phase is to set priorities of the usability goals using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The second phase involves users in the quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to evaluate the prototypes using quantitative criteria and thereafter select the best prototype. The level of importance of usability goals assists designers to decide which alternative designs meet the most important usability goals. A case study of prototype selection in students' design assignment is presented, and the proposed approach is applied to facilitate their design decision during prototype development and evaluation.