On the evaluation of usability design guidelines for improving network monitoring tools interfaces

Network monitoring tools are vital to network administrators, helping them make decisions and accomplish their tasks. In general, those tools are developed with a focus on technical aspects not taking into account important usability principles. On the other hand, the Human–Computer Interaction community presents great potential for the improvement of interfaces in network management tools suggesting that usability guidelines can guide software developers during user interface design. The goal of this work is to evaluate how different usability design guidelines can assist software developers in elaborating network monitoring tools interfaces with improved usability, creating a better experience for network administrators. To do that, we engage in an experimental study, where 52 software developers prototyped user interfaces based on different scenarios and applied 12 guidelines for usability design in network monitoring tools. Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis as well as Fisher’s Exact Test, we demonstrate that the level of complexity of the scenarios for the creation of the prototypes had no significant effect on the acceptance of the guidelines. We conclude that the guidelines were used by most participants and are relevant to assist the software developers to create interfaces with a focus on usability in network monitoring tools. •12 guidelines were used to prototype user interfaces in network monitoring tools.•The complexity of the scenarios do not affect the acceptance of the guidelines.•The guidelines were used by most of the participants.•Some guidelines were refined to avoid potential misunderstandings.•Feedback questionnaire and all the artifacts are publicly available.