SigniFYI-CDN: merged communicability and usability methods to evaluate notation-intensive interaction
This provides a simpler evaluation tool for researchers and practitioners studying interaction with complex, notation-intensive technologies, but it is incremental as it builds on and refines existing methods.
The authors tackled the problem of evaluating notation-intensive interactions by developing SigniFYI-CDN, a simplified inspection method that merges Semiotic Engineering and Cognitive Dimensions of Notations, resulting in a tool for researchers and practitioners to analyze communicability and usability in data-intensive applications.
We present SigniFYI-CDN, an inspection method built from previously proposed methods combining Semiotic Engineering and the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations. Compared to its predecessors, SigniFYI-CDN simplifies procedural steps and supports them with more analytic scaffolds. It is especially fit for the study of interaction with technologies where notations are created and used by various people, or by a single person in various, and potentially distant, occasions. In such cases, notations may serve several purposes, like (mutual) comprehension, recall, coordination, negotiation, and documentation. We illustrate SigniFYI-CDN with highlights from the evaluation of a computer tool that supports qualitative data analysis. Our contribution is a simpler tool for researchers and practitioners to probe the power of combined communicability and usability analysis of interaction with increasingly complex data-intensive applications.