Usability Evaluation of a System for Implementation of Visual Languages

The implementation of visual languages requires a wide range of conceptual and technical knowledge. The DEVIL system generates complete language implementations from high level specifications. To be applicable in real-world scenarios, the specification mechanism as well as the generated language implementations must satisfy high usability standards. In this paper, we present a systematic evaluation of the most important usability aspects of the DEViL system. We cover both, the usability of the generator and the usability of the generated products. We demonstrate that the specification mechanism has good usability characteristics on both levels. We consider this evaluation process to be applicable to similar systems as well, and thus allows the improvement of a generator system.