On the need for a popular formal semantics
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) - Special issue: position statements on strategic directions in computing research
Usability Engineering
User interface design with matrix algebra
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
Social network analysis and interactive device design analysis
Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems
Really Rethinking 'Formal Methods'
Computer
User interface model discovery: towards a generic approach
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems
Number entry interfaces and their effects on error detection
INTERACT'11 Proceedings of the 13th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction - Volume Part IV
Automatic critiques of interface modes
DSVIS'05 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Interactive Systems: design, specification, and verification
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Theorem discovery is a novel technique for the automatic analysis of statespace-based models of user interfaces, in which possible sequences of user actions are systematically computed and compared for equivalence, or close equivalence, of effect. Using this technique, we noticed a previously undetected problem with the behaviour of many widely-used inexpensive off-the-shelf interactive devices. Specifically, on many calculators, pressing the decimal point key has no effect on the display, thus unnecessarily breaking the well known usability heuristic that an interactive system should provide appropriate feedback to the user, and potentially causing unnecessary confusion that may lead to error. While this insight is interesting in itself, it is also of significance as a simple but nonetheless non-trivial example of the power and potential of theorem discovery as an analytical technique, not least because the problem - obvious once pointed out - has apparently remained undetected and unremarked upon for many years.