Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A model-driven approach for usability engineering of interactive systems

  • Published:
Software Quality Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Usability is considered to be one of the most important quality factors that determine the success/failure in the actual use of an interactive system. This can explain the ever-increasing number of publications addressing the problem of usability evaluation. However, most of these proposals only consider usability evaluations after the application is fully implemented and deployed. Some others are based on reviewing usability principles in intermediate artifacts with regard to their conformance with a set of guidelines. Since the traceability between these artifacts and the final application is not well established, performing usability evaluations by considering these artifacts as input may not ensure the usability of the final application. This problem may be alleviated by using a model-driven engineering (MDE) approach due to its intrinsic traceability mechanisms that are established by the transformation processes. The present paper aims to delineate a method for evaluating usability throughout an MDE development life cycle by considering conceptual models as input. To do this, two main contributions are proposed. The first one, called usability-driven model transformation, aims to ensure that an intermediate artifact with the required level of usability is generated. It controls the model transformation process according to a set of usability attributes. The second contribution, called early usability evaluation, performs the usability evaluation from the conceptual models by defining metrics based on conceptual primitives that constitute the conceptual models. This evaluation would be a significant advantage with regard to saving time and resources. The early usability evaluation is empirically validated by comparing the usability measure obtained by our proposal and the level of usability perceived by the end-users.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In the context of this paper, a conceptual primitive is an element of the modeling language that allows to represent some features of the system in an abstract way. Examples of conceptual primitives for the structural model are classes of a class diagram, attributes, and services.

  2. A meta-model is a language that can express models. It defines the concepts and relationships between the concepts required for the expression of the model.

References

  1. Integranovames, integranova model execution system. http://www.integranova.com/integranova-m-e-s/.

  2. Kermeta, kernel meta-modeling framework. http://www.kermeta.org.

  3. Abrahão, S., Iborra, E., & Vanderdonckt, J. (2008). Usability evaluation of user interfaces generated with a model-driven architecture tool. In E. C. Law, E. Hvannberg, & G. Cockton (Eds.), Maturing usability: Quality in software, interaction and value., human-computer interaction series (pp. 3–32). London: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Abrahão, S., & Insfran, E. (2006). Early usability evaluation in model driven architecture environments. In Proceedings of the sixth International conference on quality software (pp. 287–294). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society. doi:10.1109/QSIC.2006.26. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1190618.1191343.

  5. Abran, A., Khelifi, A., Suryn, W., & Seffah, A. (2003). Usability meanings and interpretations in iso standards. Software Quality Journal, 11(4), 325–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Aquino, N., Vanderdonckt, J., Condori-Fernández, N., Dieste, O., & Pastor, O. (2010). Usability evaluation of multi-device/platform user interfaces generated by model-driven engineering. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement, ESEM ’10 (pp. 30:1–30:10). New York, NY: ACM. doi:10.1145/1852786.1852826.

  7. Shneiderman, B. (2004). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction.

  8. Basili, V. R., Caldiera, G., & Rombach, H. D. (1994). The goal question metric approach. In Encyclopedia of Software Engineering. Wiley.

  9. Bass, L., & John, B. E. (2000). Achieving usability through software architectural styles. In CHI ’00 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems, CHI EA ’00 (pp. 171–172). New York, NY: ACM.

  10. Bastien, J. C., & Scapin, D. L. (1993). Ergonomic criteria for the evaluation of human-computer interfaces. Tech. Rep. RT-0156, INRIA. http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00070012/en/.

  11. Ben Ammar, L., & Mahfoudhi, A. (2013). Early usability evaluation in model driven framework. In ICEIS 2013: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on enterprise information systems, Volume 3 (pp. 23–30). France: Angers, 4–7 July, 2013.

  12. Ben Ammar, L., & Mahfoudhi, A. (2013). Usability driven model transformation. In Human system interaction (HSI), 2013 the 6th international conference on (pp. 110–116).

  13. Berti, S., Correani, F., Mori, G., Paternò, F., & Santoro, C. (2004). Teresa: a transformation-based environment for designing and developing multi-device interfaces. In CHI ’04 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems, CHI EA ’04 (pp. 793–794). New York, NY: ACM.

  14. Bouchelligua, W., Mahfoudhi, A., Mezhoudi, N., Daassi, O., & Abed, M. (2010). User interfaces modelling of workflow information systems. In EOMAS (pp. 143–163).

  15. Calvary, G., Coutaz, J., Thevenin, D., Limbourg, Q., Bouillon, L., & Vanderdonckt, J. (2003). A unifying reference framework for multi-target user interfaces. Interacting with Computers, 15(3), 289–308. Computer-Aided Design of User Interface.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Campbell, D. T., & Fiske, D. W. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 81–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Carjaval, L., Moreno, A. M., Sanchez-Segura, M. I., & Seffah, A. (2013). Usability through software design. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 39(11), 1582–1596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Fernandez, A., Abrahão, S., & Insfran, E. (2013). Empirical validation of a usability inspection method for model-driven web development. Journal of Systems and Software, 86(1), 161–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Fernandez, A., Abrahão, S., Insfrán, E., & Matera, M. (2013). Usability inspection in model-driven web development: Empirical validation in webml. In MoDELS (pp. 740–756).

  20. Fernandez, A., Insfran, E., & Abrahão, S. (2009). Integrating a usability model into model-driven web development processes. In Proceedings of the 10th international conference on web information systems engineering, WISE ’09 (pp. 497–510). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

  21. Fernandez, A., Insfrán, E., & Abrahão, S. M. (2009). Towards a usability evaluation process for model-driven web development. In S.M. Abrahão, K. Hornbæk, E. L. C. Law, J. Stage (Eds.), I-USED, CEUR workshop proceedings, vol. 490. CEUR-WS.org.

  22. Fleurey, F., Steel, J., & Baudry, B. (2004). Validation in model-driven engineering: testing model transformations. In Model, Design and Validation, 2004. Proceedings. 2004 first international workshop on (pp. 29–40).

  23. Fonseca, J. M. C., Calleros, J. M. G., Meixner, G., Paternó, F., Pullmann, J., Raggett, D., Schwabe, D., & Vanderdonckt, J. (2010). Model-based ui xg final report. Tech. rep., W3C.

  24. Garcia, J. G., Vanderdonckt, J., & Calleros, J. M. G. (2008). Flowixml: a step towards designing workflow management systems. International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 4(2), 163–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Gonzalez-Huerta, J., Blanes, D., Insfran, E., & Abrahão, S. (2010). Towards an architecture for ensuring product quality in model-driven software development. In Proceedings of the 11th international conference on product focused software, PROFES ’10 (pp. 28–31). New York, NY: ACM.

  26. Hariri, M. A. (2008). Contribution à une méthode de conception et génération d’interface homme-machine plastique. Ph.D. thesis (2008). Thése de doctorat dirigée par Kolski, Christophe et Tabary, Dimitri Informatique Valenciennes.

  27. Holzinger, A. (2005). Usability engineering methods for software developers. Communications of the ACM, 48(1), 71–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hussmann, H., Meixner, G., & Zuehlke, D. (Eds.). (2011). Model-driven development of advanced user interfaces, studies in computational intelligence (Vol. 340). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  29. ISO/IEC: ISO/IEC 9241 (1998). Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs). ISO/IEC.

  30. ISO/IEC: ISO/IEC 9126 (2001). Software engineering: Product quality. ISO/IEC.

  31. Ivory, M. Y., & Hearst, M. A. (2001). The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user interfaces. ACM Computing Surveys, 33(4), 470–516.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Lacob, M. E. (2003). Readability and usability guidelines.

  33. Leavit, M., B.S. (2006). Research based web design & usability guidelines.

  34. Molina, F., & Toval, A. (2009). Integrating usability requirements that can be evaluated in design time into model driven engineering of web information systems. Advances in Engineering Software, 40(12), 1306–1317.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  35. Moody, D. L. (2005). Theoretical and practical issues in evaluating the quality of conceptual models: Current state and future directions. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 55(3), 243–276.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  36. Murata, M., Uchimoto, K., Ma, Q., & Isahara, H. (2001). Magical number seven plus or minus two: Syntactic structure recognition in japanese and english sentences. In Proceedings of the second international conference on computational linguistics and intelligent text processing, CICLing ’01 (pp. 43–52). London: Springer

  37. Panach, J. I., Aquino, N., & Pastor, O. (2014). A proposal for modelling usability in a holistic mdd method. Science of Computer Programming, 86, 74–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Panach, J. I., Condori-Fernandez, N., Vos, T. E. J., Aquino, N., & Valverde, F. (2011). Early usability measurement in model-driven development: Definition and empirical evaluation. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 21(3), 339–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Panach, J. I., Juzgado, N. J., & Pastor, O. (2012). Introducing usability in a conceptual modeling-based software development process. In P. Atzeni, D. Cheung, & S. Ram (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 7532, pp. 525–530). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Panach, J. I., Juzgado, N. J., & Pastor, O. (2013). Including functional usability features in a model-driven development method. Computer Science and Information Systems, 10(3), 999–1024.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Schmidt, D. C. (2006). Model-driven engineering. IEEE Computer 39(2). http://www.truststc.org/pubs/30.html.

  42. Seffah, A., Donyaee, M., Kline, R. B., & Padda, H. K. (2006). Usability measurement and metrics: A consolidated model. Software Quality Control, 14, 159–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Seffah, A., & Metzker, E. (2004). The obstacles and myths of usability and software engineering. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 71–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Sottet, J. S., Calvary, G., Coutaz, J., & Favre, J. M. (2008). A model-driven engineering approach for the usability of plastic user interfaces. In J. Gulliksen, M. Harning, P. Palanque, G. Veer, & J. Wesson (Eds.), Engineering interactive systems, lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 4940, pp. 140–157). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Vale, S., Hammoudi, S. (2008). Context-aware model driven development by parameterized transformation. In Proceedings of the first international workshop on model driven interoperability for sustainable information systems (MDISIS’08) held in conjunction with the CAiSE’08 conference (pp. 121–133). Springer.

  46. Van Der Straeten, R., Mens, T., & Van Baelen, S. (2009). Challenges in model-driven software engineering. In M. Chaudron (Ed.), Models in software engineering, lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 5421, pp. 35–47). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Vanderdonckt, J. M., & Bodart, F. (1993). Encapsulating knowledge for intelligent automatic interaction objects selection. In Proceedings of the INTERACT ’93 and CHI ’93 conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’93 (pp. 424–429). New York, NY: ACM.

  48. Zhao, X., & Zou, Y. (2007). A framework for incorporating usability into model transformations. In Proceedings of the MoDELS 2007 workshop on model driven development of advanced user interfaces. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, October 1, 2007.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sfax, ENIS, CES Laboratory, Soukra Road km 3,5, B.P: 1173-3000, Sfax, Tunisia

    Lassaad Ben Ammar, Abdelwaheb Trabelsi & Adel Mahfoudhi

Authors
  1. Lassaad Ben Ammar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Abdelwaheb Trabelsi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Adel Mahfoudhi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lassaad Ben Ammar.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ammar, L.B., Trabelsi, A. & Mahfoudhi, A. A model-driven approach for usability engineering of interactive systems. Software Qual J 24, 301–335 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9266-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9266-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation