TOWARDS AUTOMATIC EVALUATION OF MULTIMODAL USER INTERFACES

The evaluation of the usability and the learnability of a computer system may be performed with predictive models during the design phase. It may be done on the executable code as well as by observing the user in action. In the latter case, data collected in vivo must be processed. The goal is to provide software supports for performing this difficult and time consuming-task. The paper presents an early analysis of, and experience relating to, the automatic evaluation of multimodal user interfaces. With this end in view, a generic Wizard of Oz platform has been designed to allow the observation and automatic recording of subjects' behavior while they interact with a multimodal interface. It is then shown how recorded data can be analyzed to detect behavioral patterns, and how deviations of such patterns from a data-flow-oriented task model can be exploited by a software usability critic.