Context

Traditional building and infrastructure design methodologies are inflexible and inefficient, leading to high costs and environmental damage. Generative design, with an algorithm that provides multiple options, could be a potential solution. The challenge is creating an intuitive, user-friendly application that optimizes engineers’ time, reducing manual iterations and lead to a good user experience (UX). A method for evaluating the UX is heuristic evaluation, in which heuristics are used to inspect a software product.

Objective

Since generative design applications have specific features, generic heuristics may not detect all problems related to UX. This article presents a novel set of 9 heuristics to evaluate UX in generative design applications: UXH-GEDAPP. This set is focused on evaluating both UX attributes and specific features of generative design applications.

Method

A formal methodology was used to develop the heuristics, through 7 stages: exploratory, descriptive, correlational, selection, specification, validation, and refinement. We performed 3 iterations and validated UXH-GEDAPP in 2 iterations through: heuristic evaluation, expert judgment, and user test. Since the methodology can be applied iteratively, we validated and refined the set to improve the proposal.

Results

The results obtained in the validation stage indicate that UXH-GEDAPP is useful and more effective than generic heuristics when evaluating generative design applications. UXH-GEDAPP allows to detect specific usability/UX problems as well as more severe problems related to generative design applications. Furthermore, evaluators made fewer errors associating the detected problems with the proposed heuristics, compared to generic sets.

Conclusion

UXH-GEDAPP is a new set of heuristics that encourages the creation and use of generative design applications with good UX. It can detect usability/UX problems and help correct them, as well as guide the development of new generative design applications for a pleasant and intuitive user experience.

中文翻译：

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UXH-GEDAPP：一组用于评估生成设计应用程序的用户体验启发法

语境

传统的建筑和基础设施设计方法不灵活且效率低下，导致成本高昂和环境破坏。生成式设计以及提供多种选项的算法可能是一个潜在的解决方案。我们面临的挑战是创建一个直观、用户友好的应用程序，以优化工程师的时间、减少手动迭代并带来良好的用户体验(UX)。评估用户体验的一种方法是启发式评估，其中启发式用于检查软件产品。

客观的

由于生成设计应用程序具有特定的功能，因此通用启发式可能无法检测到与用户体验相关的所有问题。本文提出了一套新颖的 9 种启发式方法来评估生成设计应用程序中的用户体验：UXH-GEDAPP。该套件专注于评估生成设计应用程序的用户体验属性和特定功能。

方法

使用正式的方法来开发启发式方法，经历了 7 个阶段：探索性、描述性、相关性、选择、规范、验证和细化。我们进行了 3 次迭代，并通过以下方式在 2 次迭代中验证了 UXH-GEDAPP：启发式评估、专家判断和用户测试。由于该方法可以迭代应用，因此我们验证并完善了该方法集以改进提案。

结果

验证阶段获得的结果表明，在评估生成设计应用程序时，UXH-GEDAPP 比通用启发式方法更有用且更有效。UXH-GEDAPP 允许检测特定的可用性/UX 问题以及与生成设计应用程序相关的更严重的问题。此外，与通用集相比，评估人员将检测到的问题与所提出的启发法相关联时犯的错误更少。

结论

UXH-GEDAPP 是一套新的启发式方法，鼓励创建和使用具有良好用户体验的生成设计应用程序。它可以检测可用性/用户体验问题并帮助纠正它们，并指导新的生成设计应用程序的开发，以获得愉快且直观的用户体验。