Usability evaluation of component-based user interfaces

The idea of building a device out of separate parts is gaining more common practice in the software industry. Software parts are designed with the potential for reuse. The reuse of the software parts promises to reduce development cost and time. This process triggers some new usability issues, especially when the user interface (UI) is also designed as a complex of several parts. A study is carried out to find out whether and how the usability of a UI part can be tested, and thirdly how the usability of an individual UI part can be affected by other UI parts. Analysis of log files that captured the basic user-system interaction components seems a promising evaluation method. Preliminary experimental results show that this evaluation method is more sensitive than traditional method as number of keystrokes or task time analysis.