Evaluating the Interface Using Expert-heuristic Method
The research aims to form a new method for evaluating interfaces, ensuring its multi-criteria nature and eliminating the shortcomings of previous methods. A combination of expert and heuristic approach is proposed, to detect a wide range of UI/UX problems, to ensure assessment competence and to reduce the level of distrust of the expert. In the first experiment, two groups of interfaces with different characteristics were evaluated, with two interfaces in each group. Fifteen heuristics were evaluated: ten general purpose criteria and five specialized criteria. Thirteen experts were involved, for whom weighting coefficients were previously calculated, taking into account their professional competencies and personal qualities influencing the reasonableness of the evaluation. After analyzing the results of the first experiment, it was decided to investigate the influence of the number of experts in the sample on the overall UI score. Therefore, for the second experiment, the optimal number of experts in the group was calculated to ensure the lowest score variance. Applications were evaluated in five groups (the number of heuristics did not change). Also, in each experiment, the outlier weights of the experts were calculated to ensure consistency of the opinions of the sample group members. In the conclusion, an analysis of the feasibility of applying the new method to mobile interfaces was performed. Conclusions on the suitability of the chosen mathematical apparatus and further ways of development of the method have been made.