Heuristic Evaluation Checklist For Domain-Specific Languages

Usability evaluation of a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) is not a simple task, since DSL designers effort might not be viable in a project context. Hence, we ease DSL designers work by providing a fast and simple way to evaluate their languages and, therefore, reduce e ffort (spend time) when a new DSL is developed. In order to do that, this paper presents a structured way to build a Heuristic Evaluation Checklist (HEC) for DSLs. This checklist is different from traditional checklists since it is focused on DSL. Once a checklist is provided, the evaluators only follow a set of heuristics and freely point out the found errors when using the DSL. Basically, the produced checklist provides a set of questions, based on the heuristics that direct an evaluation for a specific domain. In order to show how our proposal can be applied to a DSL and to provide an initial evaluation of our HEC, this paper shows also an instance to evaluate graphical and textual DSLs. Furthermore, this paper also discusses the qualitative analysis of an initial evaluation for the proposed HEC through seven interviews with Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) experts. Finally, a brief example of use applying the developed checklist is presented.