Iterative design has been strongly recommended as part of a basic design philosophy for building measurably easy-to-use computer software. Iterative design was a major technique for meeting the specified usability goals for Eve, a new text editor for the VAX/VMS operating system. There was no adverse effect on the project schedule. Users' problems followed similar patterns to those encountered in earlier laboratory experiments on operating systems.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
GoodM. (1985). The use of logging data in the design of a new text editor. In Proc. CHI 1985 Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 93–97). New York: ACM.
2.
GouldJ. D.LewisC. (1985). Designing for usability–key principles and what designers think. Communications of the ACM, 28, 300–311.
3.
RobertsT. L. (1979). Evaluation of computer text editors (Report SSL-79-9). Xerox Palo Alto Research Center: Systems Sciences Laboratory. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.
4.
RobertsT. L.MoranT. P. (1983). The evaluation of text editors: Methodology and empirical results. Communications of the ACM, 26, 265–283.
5.
WhitesideJ.JonesS.LevyP. S.WixonD. (1985). User performance with command, menu, and iconic interfaces. In Proc. CHI 1985 Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 185–191). New York: ACM.
