Ontological Sketch Models: Highlighting User—System Misfits

Ontological Sketch Modelling (OSM) is a novel approach to usability evaluation that concentrates on both the user’s conceptual models of the domain and ‘working practices’, and the conceptual models built into a device or a work-system. Analysing the degree of fit between these models can reveal potential problems in learning and use that are not revealed by existing HCI approaches. We show how OSM can identify such potential misfits between user and system. We also describe how an OSM analysis can be edited, conventionalized and viewed in tabular form, thereby allowing automatic highlighting of user-system misfits. Illustrative examples are a typical drawing application and a digital music library.

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