QUEIROZ, J. E. R.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/1354871864610613; QUEIROZ, José Eustáquio Rangel de.
Abstract:
Interactive processes have attached growing importance to the user in recent years. Currently
many of the designers try to produce high quality interfaces. Most of them begin to include human
factors principles and processes in their activities, without being necessarily human factors
experts. Several solutions are possible in interface design owe to a rapid growth in the computer
user community and to a number of trends on information processing, cognitive psychology and
usability engineering. Sophisticated technologies for interface design commercially available offer
also a powerful support. Nevertheless, these factors per si do not assure a good interface design.
Interface design documentation provide a vital contribution to build new products, either as bad
examples to be avoided or as a set of consistent guidelines. User involvement in both the
development and evaluation of design is another relevant aspect to be taken into account.
The present study reports and validates an evaluation methodology of a character-oriented user
interface of a digital image processing system - SITIM-150. Based both on the subjective user
satisfaction and on a set of technical strategies and guidelines compiled from the traditional
literature, this two-stage approach has reckoned upon 50 and 15 participants. The guidelines set
presented here are also useful for the design of most applications which include man-computer
interfaces. These are labelled into four groups: general guidelines, guidelines for the design of
screens and dialogues and for the design of conventional/online interface documentation.
A questionnaire based on a pair of semantic and numerical differential scales was employed for
measuring the user's reactions to various technical and human factors. Faults concerning to
structural and semantic consistency, chromatic resources use, message conception and access to
lists were registered. An interaction approach based on graphical resources commonly used by
most of the interactive application processes was proposed.