Evidence-based practice in human-computer interaction and evidence maps

At the onset of evidence-based practice in software engineering, prospective disciples of this approach should inspect and learn from similar attempts in other disciplines. Having participated in the National Cancer Institute's multi-year effort compiling evidence-based guidelines for information-rich web-site design, I bring my personal experiences as a member of that group to the discussions at the workshop. From my experience doing other empirical research, I propose using an evidence map to communicate research questions, the available evidence to answer those questions, the relationship between the questions, and the meaning of different paths through the evidence map. I have used this device for several empirical studies, both in HCI and in software engineering, and have found it to be a useful organization tool that could help in pursuing evidence-based software engineering.