Mobile Application Usability: Heuristic Evaluation and Evaluation of Heuristics

Ger Joyce, Mariana Lilley, Trevor Barker, and Amanda Jefferies, 'Mobile Application Usability: Heuristic Evaluation and Evaluation of Heuristics', paper presented at AHFE 2016 International Conference on Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering. Walt Disney World, Florida USA, 27-31 July 2016Many traditional usability evaluation methods do not consider mobile-specific issues. This can result in mobile applications that abound in usability issues. We empirically evaluate three sets of usability heuristics for use with mobile applications, including a set defined by the authors. While the set of heuristics defined by the authors surface more usability issues in a mobile application than other sets of heuristics, improvements to the set can be made

Available approaches to heuristic evaluation of smart-phone applications

Abstract. Usability heuristics are a lightweight tool for finding usability problems in a piece of software. These heuristics can be used for any kind of software, from desktop applications to web sites to games and to smart-phone applications. With the rise of smart phones and applications developed for them there has been a need to update the approach of heuristic evaluation to consider the limitations and new possibilities brought by smart-phone applications, when compared to more traditional desk-top applications. In this bachelor’s thesis different these issues are discussed, and along this several lists of usability heuristics were identified and listed. In addition to listing out the current research on smart-phone application heuristics, these lists were compared against the issues that are specific to smart-phone applications. Research questions in this thesis are as follows: RQ1: What guidelines / usability heuristics can be found that specifically target mobile device user interfaces? RQ2: How do these heuristic lists consider the difficulties faced by smart-phone applications

The Impact of Mobile Devise Usability Guidelines on the Design of Help Documentation for Evernote's iOS Application

abstract: The purpose of this project is to show how to develop research-based criteria and how to apply them to a specific product, Evernote's iOS mobile help tool. Initial research involved analyzing current usability research publications by performing the following steps: coding each sample for most frequent usability criteria, clarifying and simplifying each entry, reorganizing the content in each code for frequency, and combining each topic in the new organizational structure to create a single set of research-based usability guidelines. The new guidelines were used to evaluated Getting Started and Getting Started Guide from the perspective of a non-business, English-speaking, novice iOS user. The final step resulted in the following list of recommendations to improve the user experience: review and adjust the navigation design, reconsider the information design to ensure that it reflects the wide variety of users and platforms, adjust the visual design to meet cultural expectations and user needs, and edit content for clarity, word choice, and grammatical style.Master's Applied Projec

Perbandingan Metode Evaluasi USAbility (Studi Kasus : Penggunaan Perangkat Smartphone)

Usability is a key factor that determine success of a product or interactive system, like smartphone. The increasing use of smartphone and its rapid technology development, requires USAbility evaluation method that is more accurate and effective to found USAbility problem, so it can be used for product improvement in development process. This study suggests a USAbility evaluation method that is most effective to identify problem in smartphone USAge. Three USAbility evaluation methods that commonly used are compared in this study, including: think-aloud evaluation (TA), cognitive walkthrough (CW), and heuristic evaluation (HE). This study involved 15 smartphone users as participants and 16 USAbility experts who is also a smartphone users as evaluators. The results showed, among the three USAbility evaluation methods, heuristic evaluation (HE) has the highest effectiveness and severity methods, while cognitive walkthrough (CW) and think-aloud evaluation (TA) still has potential for further development

Adapting heuristic evaluation for use in information visualization

Orientador: Celmar Guimarães da SilvaDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de TecnologiaResumo: A Avaliação Heurística é um método clássico de avaliação de interfaces de um sistema interativo na área de Interação Humano-Computador. Pesquisadores e desenvolvedores de software usam esta técnica com frequência, já que ela é rápida, barata e fácil de ser executada. Porém, para usar a técnica em outros sistemas de domínio específico, é necessário criar um novo conjunto de heurística capaz de identificar os problemas dessa área. Em Visualização de Informação (InfoVis), a técnica é utilizada com o conjunto proposto por Nielsen, que possui apenas heurísticas de usabilidade, deixando de cobrir outros conceitos importantes de InfoVis. Na literatura, estão presentes conjuntos de recomendações que cobrem os conceitos de InfoVis, entretanto, muitas destas recomendações não são apresentadas como heurísticas, ou então são restritas a um determinado contexto. Desta forma, este trabalho apresenta um método para criar um conjunto de heurísticas de InfoVis, para ser usado na Avaliação Heurística. O método agrupa as heurísticas e recomendações encontradas na literatura, e cria novas heurísticas com base em cada grupo formado. Assim, um novo conjunto com 15 heurísticas genéricas foi criado, a partir de um conjunto com 62 heurísticas e recomendações e, posteriormente, avaliado. A hipótese é que o novo conjunto irá auxiliar os avaliadores a considerar um conjunto mais amplo de conceitos de visualização durante a Avaliação Heurística com, possivelmente, menos esforço cognitivo, quando comparado com a aplicação direta das 62 heurísticas e recomendaçõesAbstract: Heuristic evaluation technique is a classical evaluation method of user interface in Human-Computer Interaction area. Researchers and software developers broadly use it, given that it is fast, cheap and easy to use. Using it in other system of specific domains demands creating a new heuristic set able to identify common problems of these areas. Information Visualization (InfoVis) researchers commonly use this technique with the original usability heuristic set proposed by Nielsen, which does not cover many relevant aspects of InfoVis. InfoVis literature presents sets of guidelines that cover InfoVis concepts, but it does not present most of them as heuristics, or they cover much specific context. This work presents a method to define a set of InfoVis heuristics for use in Heuristic Evaluation. The method clusters heuristics and guidelines that was found in the literature, and creates a new heuristic based on each group. Thus, a new set of 15 generic heuristics was created, from a set of 62 heuristics and guidelines, and after it was evaluated. The new set will help evaluators to consider a broad set of visualization aspects during Heuristic Evaluation, with possibly less cognitive effort, when compared with a direct application of the 62 heuristics and guidelinesMestradoSistemas de Informação e ComunicaçãoMestre em TecnologiaCAPE

Designing for technicians working in the field: 8 usability heuristics for mobile application design

Copyright © 2016 ACM. Mobile applications are frequently used by technicians and logistics personnel to access documentation and communicate and log information about the work they do in the field. Currently, however, there are no context-specific usability heuristics for use by designers who are building mobile applications for this sector. By conducting contextual inquiries with technicians and logistics personnel who use mobile applications for their day to day work, we identified specific usability issues affecting the use of these applications. From this research, we propose a set of eight heuristics for use by designers and developers creating mobile applications for users in this area

Analisis Usability Pada Aplikasi Peduli Lindungi Sebagai Aplikasi Informasi Dan Tracking Covid-19 Dengan Heuristic Evaluation

Berbagai usaha dilakukan oleh pemerintah Republik Indonesia untuk menangani penyebaran virus covid-19. Salah satu terobosan dari pemerintah adalah dengan membuat aplikasi Peduli Lindungi, aplikasi ini diharapkan mampu untuk memberikan peringatan kepada masyarakat apabila memasuki area terdampak covid-19, lokasi fasilitas kesehatan dan melakukan pelacakan apabila ada orang-orang yang berpotensi terinfeksi virus covid-19. Singkatnya waktu dalam peluncuran aplikasi peduli dan lindungi memunculkan pertanyaaan tentang usability aplikasi ini untuk diterapkan di masyarakat. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan tahapan melakukan perancangan instrument uji usability, melaksanakan pengumpulan data usability dengan melibatkan evaluator/panel ahli, melakukan analisa terhadap hasil uji. Berdasarkan Nielsen Model faktor yang mempengaruhi kualitas usability aplikasi adalah: learnability, memorability, efficiency, errors, dan user’s satisfaction. Setelah melakukan pengujian didapatkan 9 permasalahan dengan Heuristic Evaluation dan penaanganan error memiliki nilai terendah, secara keseluruhan usability dari aplikasi bisa dikatakan sudah baik dan bisa memberikan informasi yang diharapkan oleh user

Usability heuristics for mobile applications a systematic review

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade UnB Gama, 2018.Usability is one of the factors that most affects a software quality. The increasing adoption of mobile devices brings new usability challenges, as well as a need for specific standards for this type of product. This paper aims to conduct a systematic review of the literature, complemented by a manual and snowballing search to obtain usability heuristics and heuristic evaluations for mobile applications. The result of the study was a set of thirteen usability heuristics, specific to smartphones, related to the ten Nielsen’s heuristics. In addition, five possible ways of evaluating the usability of mobile applications are described. The specification of the heuristics found shows that they can be used both for the evaluation of already developed applications and for the prototyping of new applications, which helps developers achieve their goals regarding product quality. The main contributions of this work is the compilation of desktop usability heuristics in a new, more specific set of heuristics adapted to the mobile paradigm

Heuristics Considering UX and Quality Criteria for Heuristics

Heuristic evaluation is a cheap tool with which one can take qualitative measures of a product’s usability. However, since the methodology was first presented, the User Experience (UX) has become more popular but the heuristics have remained the same. In this paper, we analyse the current state of heuristic evaluation in terms of heuristics for measuring the UX. To do so, we carried out a literature review. In addition, we had a look at different heuristics and mapped them with the UX dimensions of the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). Moreover, we proposed a quality model for heuristic evaluation and a list of quality criteria for heuristics

Incorporating Heuristic Evaluation (HE) in the Evaluation of Visual Design of the Eco-Tourism Smartphone App

Heuristic Evaluation (HE) has proven to be important in the development of different computer systems but has not been incorporated in the development of eco-tourism smartphone applications. This results inusability issues that significantly affect user experience (UX) as discussed in literature. This study reports the HE in the design and development of Niranur Agro Farm (NAF) eco-tourism smartphone applications, which could improve UX. Eight experts participated in this study, utilizing the SMART mobile usability heuristic developed for mobile application and the severity rating scale to determine usability issues. The HE findings indicated that 22 usability issues were identified. One issue was rated 4 (catastrophe), four issues were rated 3 (major problem), twelve issues were rated 2 (minor problem) and five issues were rated 1 (cosmetics). Although there are issues rated as 4 and 3, the majority of the issues were considered to be minor (1 and 2 on the scale). Results indicated that it is crucial to incorporate HE into the design and development of the eco-tourism smartphone app to minimize the usability issues faced by users. It further validated that utilizing a specific heuristic for smartphone applications would ensure that all usability issues are correctly categorized and remedied