ABSTRACT
As we approach the end of the fourth decade of the twenty-first century, intelligent agents will handle most of the time-consuming drudge work of usability engineering, freeing usability engineers (UEs) to focus on the mental work of analysis and usability recommendations. Just as gamers today meet in synthetic worlds, UEs will enter customized synthetic environments. Here they will investigate human cognition and behavioral interactions with new software capabilities. Immersed in synthetic worlds, UEs will employ a range of technologies at every step of usability evaluation. We’ll be working smarter and more efficiently to measure and improve human experiences with technology. The future holds promise for UEs and, by extension, for users of the technologies we are beginning to imagine.
