EVALUATION OF USER INTERFACES - EVADIS-II - A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION APPROACH

As a result of the importance of the usability approach in system deve lopment and the EC's 'Directive concerning the minimum safety and heal th requirements for VDT workers' (EWG 1990), there is an accepted need for practical evaluation methods for user interfaces. The usability a pproach and the EC Directive are not restricted to user interface desi gn, as they include the design of appropriate hardware and software, a s well as organization, job, and task design. Therefore system designe rs are faced with many, often conflicting, requirements and need to ad dress the question, 'How can usability requirements comprehensively be considered and evaluated in system development?' Customers buying har dware and software and introducing them into their organization ask, ' How can I select easy-to-use hardware and software?' Both designers an d customers need an evaluation procedure that covers all the organizat ional, user, hard- and software requirements. The evaluation method, E VADIS II, we present in this paper overcomes characteristic deficienci es of previous evaluation methods. In particular, it takes the tasks, the user, and the organizational context into consideration during the evaluation process, and provides computer support for the use of the evaluation procedure.