Human–computer interaction design with multi-goal facilities layout model

Both qualitative and quantitative multiple goals (or factors) are handled in the objective function of a quadratic assignment model to formulate a multi-goal layout problem. A quadratic assignment model deals with facilities layout problems, assigning ‘n’ facilities to ‘n’ mutually exclusive locations by either construction or improvement procedures so that the objective of minimization of cost (or flow) is attained. In this paper, we propose an alternate approach to an existing approach that handles the sum of distance-weighted closeness relationships and distance-weighted interactions assigned relative weights in the objective function. In our approach, the sum of distance-weighted congruent objectives of normalized weighted closeness relationships and distance-weighted normalized weighted interactions are handled in the objective function. Then a two-step procedure containing construction and improvement procedures of pair-wise exchange process is used to obtain the layouts. The layouts obtained in an existing approach are evaluated with respect to the attributes of the objective function criteria values in the proposed approach. The proposed multi-goal facilities layout model is used here for the user interface components layout problem. The results of both the approaches are compared for the example task under consideration.