Usability Measurement Using a Fuzzy Simulation Approach

Usability is a three-dimensional quality of software product, encompassing efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. Satisfaction always relies on subjective judgment, but on some degree, the measurement of efficiency and effectiveness is able to be objectively calculated by some approaches, which can help designers to compare different prototype design candidates in the early stage of product development. To address the limitation of state-redundancy and inter-uncertainty of FSM, this paper introduces an existing approach to simplify a general FSM by reducing the redundant states, and proposes a fuzzy mathematical formula for calculating the probability of state-transition. Then, an algorithm for measuring efficiency and effectiveness data on simulated FSM is designed based on the fuzzy function. This measurement approach is very appropriate to be applied on the small-medium types of embedded software in practice.