An experiment-based framework of evaluating interface usability in industrial context

With systems being developed to be more and more powerful, their users have become more important than ever in the human computer interaction process. However, in complex systems in industrial contexts a major concern is still lingered on their performance. Even the acclaimed promising ecological interface design principle has overlooked this aspect and doesn’t pay enough attention to how the users have interacted with, how well they use and how they feel the produced interface. That overlook further explorations about the interface design. This is the particular concern of this study. Aiming to effectively evaluate the user interface usability in the industrial context, the concept of usability has been redefined according to the need of present era. Except for the traditional performance concern, this thesis concentrates on emotional states of users. An experiment-based framework was constructed and empirical studies were carried out. Several experiments have been conducted as part of the framework, in which both subjective and objective methods were employed, as a result, the users could be understood more for evaluating the interface usability. Results from the evaluation could go further to give feedback for interface design in the next iteration cycle.