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Method and system for quantitative determination of software ease of use

Inactive Publication Date: 2007-07-12
IBM CORP
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007] Biometric characteristics have the advantage of being subject to direct measurement and quantification, which is not true of a user's subjective state of mind. Use of biometric data to assess software ease of use can be deployed in experiments or tests to measure ease

Problems solved by technology

By contrast, software would be considered difficult to use if, during ease of use testing, it produces a significant number of biometric responses experimentally or experientially determined to be negative indicators for ease of use.

Method used

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  • Method and system for quantitative determination of software ease of use
  • Method and system for quantitative determination of software ease of use
  • Method and system for quantitative determination of software ease of use

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Embodiment Construction

[0027] Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIG. 1, there is shown a basic implementation of the present invention which is used to measure the ease of use of a software system. The step 110 is entered when the software being analyzed for ease of use is initiated and is ready to receive interaction from the user. In step 120, an initial reading of the biometric data from a user engaged in using the software is taken. This reading can be taken when the user starts the software system on his / her computer. Some software systems are already running as background processes in a computer system (e.g., as daemon processes in UNIX operating systems). In the context of those systems, this reading can be taken when the user makes the first interaction with the software system. In step 130, more biometric data is collected and the changes from the original biometric data is determined. This would indicate conditions such as an increase in blood pressure, or a decrease in bod...

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PUM

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Abstract

The present invention uses biometrics for the quantitative determination of software ease of use by collecting biometric data from a software user, identifying changes in the biometric data as the user uses the software, determining if the changes are indicative of software ease of use issues, and generating a signal as output if the changes are determined to be indicative of software ease of use issues. The sensors may be integrated into a computer mouse or other peripheral device with which the user comes in regular contact during use.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to the field of measuring software ease of use. BACKGROUND DESCRIPTION [0002] Most software systems and applications provide at least one user interface. Such an interface may be graphical or it may be provided by a text input from a terminal, or from a set of dedicated peripheral devices. Similarly most applications, middleware and solutions provide user interfaces for purposes of configuring and installation. A user interface is required every time a person is expected to be the user of a software system or application. [0003] It is always desirable, for efficiency purposes, to make interfaces as user-friendly as possible. The existing art, however, does not provide adequate quantitative methods to measure either ease of use or human-friendliness of a user interface in a manner that provides a sufficient correlation to the experience of a human being in configuring, installing and using the software. [0004] Because ease o...

Claims

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Application Information

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IPC IPC(8): G06F17/00
CPCG06F3/015
Inventor VERMA, DINESH CHANDRAVERMA, PARIDHI
Owner IBM CORP