ABSTRACT
Rapid prototyping is frequently used to design interface systems for commercial
software. The goal is to rapidly iterate a cycle of creating, evaluating, and redesigning, to
produce an intuitive, easy to use interface. In this paper we discuss how usability testing,
a popular means of evaluation for rapid prototyping, could be augmented by testing
simulated users. The simulated user is not a new idea; it has its origins in GOMS
modeling (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983), and has also been explored using cognitive
architectures (e.g., Gray, 2000; Howes & Young, 1996) such as ACT-R (Anderson &
Lebiere, 1998) and SOAR (Newell, 1990). However, not much attention has been paid to
integrating simulated users into rapid prototyping and usability testing.
