Novice use of a predictive human performance modeling tool to produce UI recommendations

Abstract

This note describes two studies of the use of a performance modeling tool, CogTool, for making recommendations to improve a user interface. The first study replicates findings by Bonnie John [7]: the rates at which novice modelers made correct recommendations (88.1%) and supported them (68.2%) are close to the values in John's study (91.7% and 75.1%, respectively). A follow-on study of novice modelers on the same task without CogTool produced sig-nificantly lower values. CogTool improves the UI design recommendations made by novices.