GCS: A Quick and Dirty Guideline Compliance Scale

Expert-based usability evaluation methods offer valuable alternatives to traditional user testing in Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) development. While general measures of usability for user-based empirical studies are well-known throughout the community of researchers, expert-based approaches often lack such general measures of usability. This research introduces the Guideline Compliance Scale (GCS), a measure that can be applied during guideline reviews to assess the overall level of usability. Several guidelines relevant for the system being evaluated are rated by the evaluators according to their compliance. In the case study for our research, an automotive user interface was empirically evaluated in a user study as well as a guideline review with experts. The usability problem lists, which form part of the output, were made comparable by classification using the Usability Problem Classifier (UPC). An in-depth analysis revealed differences and similarities in the problem identification of both applied methods. Comparing the results of the GCS from the guideline review with the results of the System Usability Scale (SUS) from the user study, regarding the overall level of usability, showed similar results for both scales.