The Role of Formal Proof in Modelling Interactive Behaviour

When proving properties of formally described interactive systems, trade-offs have to be made between the simplicity of the model — which relates to the ease of performing proofs — and the real-world validity of the model. This issue is particularly important when the proof incorporates properties of user behaviour as well as the device specification. This paper discusses these trade-offs, using a simple model of a web-browsing system as an example. The property we focus on relates to usability: showing whether or not the things a user wants to do are easy to do.

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