Evaluating Spatial and Textual Style of Displays

The next generation of Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) will offer rapid access to perceptually-rich, information abundant, and cognitively consistent interfaces. These new GUIs will be subjected to usability tests and expert reviews, plus new analysis methods and novel metrics to help guide designers. We have developed and tested first generation concordance tools to help developers to review terminology, capitalization, and abbreviation. We have also developed a dialog box summary table to help developers spot patterns and identify possible inconsistencies in layout, color fonts, font size, font style, and ordering of widgets. In this study we also explored the use of metrics such as widget counts, balance, alignment, density, and aspect ratios to provide further clues about where redesigns might be appropriate. Preliminary experience with several commercial projects is encouraging.