Establishing usability heuristics for heuristics evaluation in a specific domain: is there a consensus?

Heuristics evaluation is frequently employed to evaluate usability. While general heuristics are suitable to evaluate most user interfaces, there is still a need to establish heuristics for specific domains to ensure that their specific usability issues are identified. This paper presents a comprehensive review of 70 studies related to usability heuristics for specific domains. The aim of this paper is to review the processes that were applied to establish heuristics in specific domains and identify gaps in order to provide recommendations for future research and area of improvements. The most urgent issue found is the deficiency of validation effort following heuristics proposition and the lack of robustness and rigour of validation method adopted. Whether domain specific heuristics perform better or worse than general ones is inconclusive due to lack of validation quality and clarity on how to assess the effectiveness of heuristics for specific domains. The lack of validation quality also affects effort in improving existing heuristics for specific domain as their weaknesses are not addressed

The Impact of Mobile Technology in the Battle against COVID-19

Mobile technology has undergone rapid development in the last decade and immediately found fertile ground for use in digital healthcare applications. The advantages both for citizens and the health domain are many and interconnected. During the pandemic, mobile technology was also useful for minimizing social distancing, epidemiological monitoring through contact tracing, psychological support, and maintaining social relationships. There is a particular need for scholars to focus both on the innovations in this field during the pandemic and on the problems hampering the use of mobile technology to facilitate the correct and effective introduction of this technology into routine clinical programs in stable health care models. All professionals working in this sector were encouraged to contribute with their experiences. This reprint contains contributions from various experts and different fields. Aspects relating to the success and failures of employment, the medical experience, and acceptance are addressed. Particular space was also given to the role of social media, the use of apps (also presenting critical issues), and innovative apps for contact tracing. The digital divide and the infodemic were also investigated along with their impacts on citizens during the pandemic, for example, in following government directives relating to prevention and vaccination. We dedicate the book to all those involved with different roles in digital health

Evaluating The Usability And Accessibility Of LMS “Blackboard” At King Saud University

King Saud University is in the process of adopting and implementing the interactive Blackboard Learning Management Systems (LMSs) with features that allow members of staff and teachers from different faculties to access, upload assignments, send quizzes, download content, and evaluate the academic progress of the members of faculty. However, many faculty members complain about the accessibility and usability of the e-learning software because of the perceptions that the interactive features are not user friendly. Little research has been done to evaluate the accessibility and usability of the e-learning software. The current study was conducted to answer the research questions on the accessibility and usability of the blackboard vista e-learning software and the barriers of user experience when interacting with blackboard. The study was based on the hypothesis that Blackboard LMS is highly accessible and usable by teachers in the King Saud University and a hypothesis that stated otherwise. The elements that were evaluated using questionnaires include the design user interface, navigational features, and ease of use to answer the research questions. The results proved the hypothesis that ‘Blackboard LMS is accessible and usable by the teachers from different faculties for the delivery of content in the King Saud University. However, the study recommends that university should customize the e-learning software to the needs of the teachers to offer courses in English and in Arabic to increase and enhance the accessibility and usability of the software.

Contents Evaluation of University Libraries Website in Nigeria

Purpose:The study focused on the contents evaluation of university library websites in Northern, Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach:This study adopted analytical survey method to collect data from the fourteen private university libraries websites. Research limitation(s): Public (State and Federal)Universities are not part of the study. Key finding(s):The result revealed that most of the private university libraries in Northern part of Nigeria have not enriched the content of their library websites. And a good number of the libraries websites are poorly designed and outdated. Practical implication(s): The findings of the study has made it possible for university libraries to understand their short coming and improve on the development and redesigning of their library website contents. Contribution to knowledge: It would be a great contribution to the existing body of knowledge on website creation and development in general and content development of university library websites in particular, as there are limited research conducted so far

A heuristic evaluation checklist for mobile shopping applications

Studies on issues related to mobile shopping applications are numerous, however, there is inadequacy in implementing the heuristic evaluation approach to identifying and documenting definite kinds of issues as far as their classifications for mobile shopping applications. Recent studies have shown that there is a deficiency of proper evaluation methods and suitable heuristics and subheuristics needed in recognizing mobile-specific usability issues since existing checklists are either web-centered or developed for general mobile applications such as social media mobile applications and utility mobile applications, and not for mobile shopping applications. These existing checklists are incapable of identifying usability issues of mobile shopping applications; hence, this study aims to address these issues by developing a heuristic evaluation checklist for mobile shopping applications. The strategy employed in the evaluation comprises four phases: identifying problems and objectives, heuristic identification, heuristic evaluation checklist development, and heuristic checklist evaluation. Twelve domain experts verified the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist and data collected was analysed using the Fuzzy Delphi Method. The study successfully identified suitable heuristics and subheuristics that made up the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist. Subsequently, a heuristic evaluation was conducted by six domain experts comprising usability experts, software and mobile application developers, as well as mobile shopping application designers, and the results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist in identifying significant usability issues in Shopee mobile shopping applications. Through the heuristic evaluation checklist, usability experts and analysts can direct a dynamically exact evaluation of online shopping applications. In the same method, software and mobile application developers as well as mobile shopping designers can logically design a usable interface following a set of usability standards that will meet users' satisfaction

Human Computer Interaction and Web-Based Learning Platforms: e-Learning Website Features vis-à-vis Student Perception

The utilisation of web-based e-learning platforms is increasing throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The majority of these platforms were developed initially by institutions in the West; only later were menus and icons translated into Arabic to assist Arabic-speaking students. Users have observed that during the development, adaptation, and implementation (adoption) stages, insufficient attention was directed toward usability. Within the industry it is common practice to apply Nielsen’ heuristics, as a measure of usability, to designs intended for business or commercial uses, these heuristics are considered a standard measure. This study focuses on the application of Nielsen’s heuristics to web based learning platforms to evaluate usability. The aim is to understand and evaluate the usability of these applications from the perspective of students and to compare and contrast these with the findings of a Heuristic evaluation of these platforms by groups of professionals. The study includes the development of a usability guideline framework and an extensive set of criteria to be applied to evaluate web based learning platforms (WBLP). The analysis of the data collected and applying the heuristic evaluation of experts demonstrate that a high correspondence with previous sources. The research concludes that a heuristic evaluation, based on Nielsen’s model, is an effective, appropriate and sufficient usability evaluation method, as well as a relatively easy tool. It also identified a high percentage of usability problems in the target WBLP, Arabic version of Blackboard, which contributes to part of research conclusions

Web engineering for the evaluation of large complex web systems: methodologies in web metrics

Roaming the Internet, users sometimes encounter severe problems or feel dissatisfied using a particular site. E-government websites are the public gateways to access information and services but there is still no agreement on how to assess a government’s online presence. Failure of e-government projects in achieving their goals is common and there is uncertainty about how best to evaluate an e-government website. It has been argued that existing evaluation frameworks have some methodological limitations and they mostly neglected citizens. There is a lack of an engineering approach for building web systems and the literature on measuring the quality of website is limited. There is an uncertainty in the selection of evaluation methods and some risks of standardizing inadequate evaluation practices. Managing the complexity of web applications, Web Engineering is emerging as a new discipline for the development and evaluation of web systems to promote high-quality websites. But web quality is still a debatable issue and web metrics is considered a valuable area of ongoing research. Therefore this research focuses on the methodological issues underlying web metrics and how to develop an applicable set of measurement for designing websites. The main aim is to create new metrics for web engineering and develop a generalizable measurement framework for local e-government since research in this field is limited. This study adopted a positivist quantitative research and used triangulation web evaluation methods (heuristic evaluation, user testing, automatic link checkers, and Alexa) to test multiple-case study of Saudi city websites. The proposed E-City Usability Framework is unique in integrating 3-dimension measures (website usability, e-services, and the number and type of e-services), and in using multi-orientations to cover several aspects of e-government: output (information and services), outcomes (citizen-centricity indicators), model, and model-based assessments.Existing e-government models were criticized, and the findings employed in developing the proposed framework. The best web evaluation methods were heuristic evaluation and user testing, while link checkers and Alexa proved to be unreliable tools; nevertheless, they can be used as a useful complementary approach. Saudi city websites were ranked by website quality, e-services, and overall evaluation. Common usability problems in these websites were found to be: the sites were not citizen-centered, limited e-services and information, no e-transaction, no emergency alerts, no municipal budget, and no city council reports. They also suffered from broken links, an inactive city map, a poor eComplaint section, and a nonfunctioning search facility