The paper is concerned with automatic usability assessment, based on heuristic principles. The objective is to lay the ground, albeit still rather informally, of a program of assessing the usability of an interactive system using formal methods. Further research can then extend this into an algebra of interactive systems.

Although many formal methods have been proposed for improving the quality of software speciications, a number of barriers to widespread use of these methods remain. This paper describes four of these barriers|failure to scale, unnatural interfaces, limited analysis capabilities, and insuu-cient tool integration|and suggests some promising approaches for overcoming them. These approaches include...

As part of a project investigating modularity in the formal development of software , we have investigated approaches for deriving a set of module interfaces from a formal speciication. Rather than base this design on any structure explicit in the speciication, we utilise the implicit structure formed by patterns of reference between state variables and operations. Our work has involved speciic...

The goal of the new NASA Aviation Safety Program (AvSP) is to reduce the civil aviation fatal accident rate by 80% in ten years and 90% in twenty years. This program is being driven by the accident data with a focus on the most recent history. Pilot error is the most commonly cited cause for fatal accidents (up to 70%) and obviously must be given major consideration in this program. While the g...