Choosing the UI Tool Which Best Suits Your Needs

The large number and power of user interface development tools (UIDTs) has answered the question of how designers can construct user interfaces which meet increasing consumer demands. It has, however, raised a new question – which tool should they choose? Previously, little work has been done to provide an effective and systematic mechanism to enable designers to select the most appropriate UIDT given their design requirements and levels of knowledge and experience. A recent industrial survey of the use of UIDTs found that this lack of evaluative support led to the selection of unsatisfactory tools and highlighted the need to provide developers with a mechanism to help them confidently select the tool which is right for them (McKirdy 1998). S.U.I.T. is a framework and methodology for the selection of user interface development tools which meets this need. This paper presents S.U.I.T. and discusses a recent empirical study conducted to evaluate its practical use.