The development of design aid tools for a human factor based user interface design

Reports some results of the project “User Interface Design Assistance (IDA)”. The objective of this project is to develop computer-based design aid tools for a human-factors-based user interface design. The reasons for concentrating on human factors are their increasing importance in the new European Economic Area (consisting of the EC and EFTA) and the lack of knowledge of designers in the area of human factors. The design aid tools are integrated in a user interface management system (UIMS) to support the designers during the development process. The aim is to impart human factors knowledge for innovative user interfaces (e.g. object-oriented graphical interfaces, 3D user interfaces, hypermedia user interfaces) to the designers. This is done with the help of design aid tools, like composition tools, tutoring tools and quality assurance tools. These tools are presented in some detail. These first results have shown that it is possible, in principle, to realise such design aid tools