THE EVALUATION OF INTERFACE DESIGN ON CDROMS

Databases on CDROM are one of the more complex types of facility that will be accessed by the general public, either in their home, in airport lounges and other public arenas or in libraries. These databases extend over a wide range of different media types including bibliographic, full‐text and multimedia. Interfaces include DOS‐based and GUI‐based products. This paper reviews the literature on the design and evaluation of user interfaces on CDROM, with the objective of distilling guidelines for these activities. More specifically the article defines interfaces, dialogues and interaction, and explores the diversity in and issues associated with standardisation in interface design for CDROMs. Current criteria and guidelines for the evaluation of CDROM interfaces include those of the Special Interest Group on CDROM Applications and Technology (SIGCAT) and guidelines proposed by other authors. Using this earlier work as a basis an alternative set of guidelines is proposed.