An automated tool for describing and evaluating user interfaces

The authors propose an automated tool that designers of user interfaces could use to formally describe interface designs and evaluate these designs in terms of ease of use and ease of learning. They also describe a prototype system that has been built to illustrate the proposed concept. The tool consists of an Interface Description and Evaluation System (IDES) that allows the performance of the following functions: (1) create a formal description of user interfaces, (2) delete, add and modify parts of an interface description, (3) query an interface description, and (4) evaluate an interface description in terms of human factors. In addition to creating, manipulating and analyzing interface descriptions, an IDES can also be used to generate HELP about how to perform a given task with a given interface and compare the predictions of different analytic models