Metric-based evaluation of graphical user interfaces: model, method, and software support

Abstract

Many factors contribute to ensuring User eXperience (UX) of Graphical User Interfaces, such as, but not limited to: usability, fun, engagement, subjective satisfaction. Aesthetics is a potential element that could also significantly contribute to this user experience. Although aesthetics have been extensively discussed, there is a need to rely on a sound, empirically validated methodology in order to properly evaluate how aesthetics could be measured, namely through metrics. Two main issues need to be addressed: the representativeness and the relevance of aesthetics metrics. In order to address these challenges, this paper introduces a methodology for metric-based evaluation of a graphical user interface of any type. This methodology is based on an underlying model that captures aesthetics aspects and related metrics, a method for computing them based on the underlying model, and software that supports enacting this method on any type of graphical user interface.