Heuristic evaluation of stock exchange mobile application in Malaysia

In recent years, heuristic evaluation has focused to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of applications. This technique is considered as the most effective tool that is used in human-computer interaction studies to test the usability of information systems. Moreover, this technique is widely adopted to analyze the usability of applications as it is inexpensive and quick.The objective of this study is to use the heuristic evaluation principals to assess the effectiveness of the stock exchange mobile application in Malaysia. Questionnaire survey method was used and data were collected by 25 participants from Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE). The heuristic evaluation was conducted by 25 experts to examine the usefulness of stock exchange mobile application. The results revealed that stock exchange application is an effective and useful application that has all required features. Meanwhile, findings also postulated that most of the users show agreeableness regarding the applications of principals of heuristics evaluation in this application. These heuristic principals can further used to avoid the usability gaps in this stock exchange application.This study also gives guidelines to designers for taking corrective measures during the designing of the applications for the stock exchange. Additionally, these guidelines help to provide solutions in the future that how designers may improve the user interface of these stock exchange applications that may improve the experience of users

The Design of Application-Specific Heuristics for the Usability Evaluation of the Digital Doorway

The Digital Doorway (DD) is a joint initiative between the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The DD is a non-standard computer system deployed amongst underprivileged communities in South Africa with the objective to promote computer literacy. Since its inception, there has been no usability or accessibility evaluation of the software installed on the DD, mainly due to lack of usability engineering or interaction design expertise within the development team. The goal of the research presented in this paper was to design a solution to this problem by developing a suitable instrument that could guide DD application developers in the design and development of more usable DD software and interfaces. Design research was used as a research methodology. We first investigated the applicability of the standard usability and accessibility evaluation methods for evaluating the software installed on the DD. During the first cycle of design research, we established that a heuristic-like evaluation method would be an appropriate method for evaluating the usability and direct accessibility support provided by the DD. During a second cycle of design research, embedded in the first, we also developed a set of multi-category heuristics as the ‘instrument’ that could guide the developers during design of applications as well as in the first-level (formative) evaluation thereof. To verify the heuristics, we conducted a usability evaluation of the DD and triangulated the results with a direct field observation at a natural environment of DD use, together with user-administered questionnaires