Usability Inspection of the ECONOF System's User Interface Visualisation Component

Abstract

This chapter is a report on the findings of a user interface evaluation process performed on a decision support system named ECONOF. The issue of properly evaluating the visualization component of a system’s user interface is first addressed. Then, the usefulness of the results obtained is shown through the illustration of the improvements made to the ECONOF visualization component. As the user interface evaluation step in most software design and development projects is more often than not neglected, when not totally bypassed, computer professionals need to be more aware of the importance of the user interface design step within any kind of development life cycle.