VISUAL AND TEXTUAL CONSISTENCY CHECKING TOOLS FOR GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES

Designing user interfaces with consistent visual and textual propertie s is difficult. To demonstrate the harmful effects of inconsistency, w e conducted an experiment with 60 subjects. Inconsistent interface ter minology slowed user performance by 10 to 25 percent. Unfortunately, c ontemporary software tools provide only modest support for consistency control. Therefore, we developed SHERLOCK, a family of consistency an alysis tools, evaluates visual and textual properties of user interfac es. It provides graphical analysis tools such as a dialog box summary table that presents a compact overview of visual properties of all dia log boxes. SHERLOCK provides terminology analysis tools including an I nterface Concordance, an Interface Spellchecker, and Terminology Baske ts to check for inconsistent use of familiar groups of terms. Button a nalysis tools include a Button Concordance and a Button Layout Table t o detect variant capitalization, distinct typefaces, distinct colors, variant button sizes, and inconsistent button placements. This paper d escribes the design, software architecture, and the use of SHERLOCK. W e tested SHERLOCK with four commercial prototypes. The outputs, analys is, and feedback from designers of the applications are presented.