#14 Develop an experiment authoring tool

[Richard Mitchell]

"Many human-computer interaction researchers come exclusively from a psychology background and are not necessarily au fait with programming or mark-up. This means that under the current system they may have to employ someone else to actually create the XML files for the experiments they wish to carry out. This experiment creation process would be vastly simplified by creating a simple tool to enable researchers to create the XML files without requiring any knowledge or understanding of the underlying structure.

The main requirement of such a tool would be usability. It is quite simple to derive wizards for creation of many of the XML elements directly, by rewording in plain English. Increased usability could also be achieved by also making this tool a Firefox® extension. If this were the case, instead of entering XPaths for elements by hand, HCI researchers could select them in the browser using the mouse."

~ Mitchell, R. (2008)