ABSTRACT
GOMS Modeling for Older Adults Kurt Lewin, a pioneer of modern social psychology, is credited with saying that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. Usability testing is a practical, although potentially costly way to test out product designs. A complementary approach is to use theory to make predictions about how a typical user might fare with a particular design. In this tutorial we convert some of the theories developed in cognitive psychology about information processing into a practical, first-approximation modeling technique that can complement and, ideally, substitute for usability testing. We rely on the Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection Rules (GOMS) modeling formalism. Such modeling can serve as a logical next step following task analysis (described in Chapter 15) to help choose among competing designs for a product or system. Task analysis is actually an integral part of GOMS modeling.
