A validation of ergonomic criteria for the evaluation of human‐computer interfaces

This article presents the results of an experiment designed to validate a set of ergonomic criteria for the evaluation of human‐computer interfaces. Criteria definitions that were designed in a previous study, were tested in a concept‐identification task. Twenty‐four subjects (12 human factors specialists and 12 nonspecialists) were asked to identify the criterion, within a set of 18 elementary criteria, that was violated for each of 36 usability problems. The results show no difference between groups either in terms of performance times or correct identifications. The mean percentage of correct identifications was 59.85%. This result calls for the refinement of some definitions. A detailed examination of the data and an analysis of confusion matrices permits the identification of categories of well‐defined criteria and categories of criteria that would benefit from improvements in their definitions. These results seem to support the feasibility of an evaluation method based on explicitely defined criteria.