Towards Usability Guidelines for Mobile Websites and Applications

The market for mobile devices is growing rapidly nowadays. Constant technolog-ical improvements provide great opportunities for the creation of mobile applica-tions. For the success of a mobile application or website, one of the main con-cerns, besides security issues, is usability. Poor usability decreases user produc-tivity and consequently causes loss of users. In order to avoid these problems, usability aspects have to be considered already during the design phase of the ap-plication, e.g. by following predefined usability guidelines. Although usability guidelines for web development are already in place since the 1990s, structured and evaluated usability guidelines for mobile applications can rarely be found in scientific literature. Thus, in this paper we introduce a catalogue of usability guidelines for mobile applications and websites, and subsequently demonstrate their usage by applying them in two case studies: the development of a mobile application and a mobile website

Applicant perception on e-recruitment content and usability in Malaysia a study case among undergraduate student at UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka / Muhammad Aimullah Mohd Mansor...[et al]

Due to emergence of using internet as a medium to recruit new applicant, erecruitment today has become the most effective medium applied by any organization in this world today as their recruitment tool. This practice already proves as competitive advantages to those organization use erecruitment as their practice. This purpose of this research is to measure the applicant perception toward e recruitment based on perceived efficiency, user friendliness, fairness perception, information provision and internet selection image. Around 254 questionnaire was distributed to the undergraduate student that selected by a program that available at Universiti Teknologi Mara Kampus Bandaraya Melaka. Overall the research finding shows that the relationship between the element of application perception undergraduate student toward content and usability of e-recruitment become more attractive

CROSS-CULTURAL WEB DESIGN STUDY: RESEARCHERS’CHALLENGING TASKS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Cross-cultural web design research in developing countries especially in Southeast Asia is challenging due to its cross-cultural constraints and complexities. Drawn from analysis and extensive literature review in cross-cultural studies, HCI and design theories, the paper presents the current research trends and challenges faced by contemporary researchers in this area. Myriad of definitions and understanding of culture; uncritical adoption of models and culture theories; issues of etic, emic and the problems of pseudo-etic claims in research findings; and the significant role of designer as primary decision-maker in design processes, are the challenges delineated in this paper. It is crucial to examine these issues to secure the best practice in cross-cultural web design study. The paper concludes by indicating a substantial misdirection in the current research trends and suggests that a redirection of research approach is essential to improve the web service in government websites in order to further enhance social and economic development. Five significant guidelines to conduct cross-cultural web design research in developing countries are thus proposed

Towards Usability Guidelines for Mobile Websites and Applications

Abstract. The market for mobile devices is growing rapidly nowadays. Constant technological improvements provide great opportunities for the creation of mobile applications. For the success of a mobile application or website, one of the main concerns, besides security issues, is usability. Poor usability decreases user productivity and consequently causes loss of users. In order to avoid these problems, usability aspects have to be considered already during the design phase of the application, e.g. by following predefined usability guidelines. Although usability guidelines for web development are already in place since the 1990s, structured and evaluated usability guidelines for mobile applications can rarely be found in scientific literature. Thus, in this paper we introduce a catalogue of usability guidelines for mobile applications and websites, and subsequently demonstrate their usage by applying them in two case studies: the development of a mobile application and a mobile website. Keywords: Usability, usability guidelines, mobile applications, mobile websites Introduction The market for mobile devices is growing rapidly nowadays. Gartner research reported that "In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8% increase from 2008" [1]. Nielsen names 2010 "the year of mobile" One of the main concerns in mobile applications, next to security issues, is usability [6], which can be defined as "the degree to which specified users can achieve specified goals in a particular environment, with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction" In the development of applications for mobile devices a number of issues have to be taken into account, such as small screen size, limited processing power, data entry methods, connectivity, etc. • RQ 1: Which usability guidelines should be considered to develop a usable mobile website or application? • RQ 2: To which extent are these guidelines applicable to a real world development process of mobile websites and applications? The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In the next section, related work in the field of usability guidelines is presented. In section 3, the research approach is explained, followed by a literature review on usability experiments in section 4, which results in a catalogue of mobile usability guidelines. The compiled guidelines are then utilized in two demonstration scenarios, a mobile application for a process modelling tool and a mobile website for research portals, as presented in section 5. The evaluation of the suggested guidelines is described in section 6. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings and limitations of our research, as well as an outline of the future steps. Related Work The first guidelines for user interfaces (UI) of desktop applications appeared in the beginning of the 1980s and the first web-specific guidelines were formulated in the 1990s 1604 Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been done much successful work on establishing usability guidelines for websites. For instance, the Usability.gov group has created a database of web usability guidelines Structured and evaluated guidelines for developing mobile applications can hardly be found in the scientific literature Research Method To address the research questions specified in the introduction, the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), introduced in The methodology consists of six steps: problem identification and motivation, definition of the objectives for a solution, design and development, demonstration, evaluation and communication of the research result

The extension of website usability model and its evaluation criteria for Malaysia higher education institution

Website usability research is a consistently developing field. It has attracted many researchers based on their capabilities and constraints that are available for website usability. Even though there are many research about website usability, it devours the cause of inconsistency due to many websites usability aspects that offered by the researchers. There are lacks of research on website usability that focused on higher education institution website. It comprises the usability as the second order and satisfaction as mediator as well as the use of usability attributes such as content, navigation, learnability, accessibility, interface design and satisfaction to measure the higher education institution websites. In this sense, it is important to identify the constructs when assessing the higher education institution website usability in order to be able to design decent usability guidelines that support the measurement instrument and hence generate better results. The research is carried out to propose the extension of website usability model that has element of mediator and second order in the model. There are few constructs that are identified to evaluate the website usability such as effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility, learnability, satisfaction, navigability, content, interface design and intention to use. A mixed method that included qualitative and quantitative approach were used in this study. Interview with experts are conducted to obtain a better view about the model and construct in the research. Then, the instrument is needed to undergo content validity examination by experts, pre-test and pilot test to be utilized for assessment of the instrument. The final instrument of website usability, namely the Questionnaire Website Usability (QWU) that have 9 constructs and 45 items of questionnaire to evaluate the website and validate the extension website usability model were strengthened through a study conducted on 654 respondents. The data analysis using Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the relationship between constructs in this research. The research has found that the usability has a significant relationship with satisfaction and in turn, satisfaction has a significant relationship to the intention to use. Based on the measurement model for usability as second order shows that all requirements are fulfiled and significant. The findings have also discovered that the satisfaction is mediated between usability and intention to use. The finding contributes to the knowledge in the field of website usability. It has demonstrated that satisfaction as a mediator plays a vital role in a website usability model. This has been shown by the user perception on the website that they have used. The website usability attributes as a second order makes the model simpler and reduces the complexity of the model. The extension model contributes to the development of additional theoretical linkages which is between usability construct, satisfaction and intention to use. In conclusion, the total of 9 constructs and 45 items of the website usability model are identified and validated as the main attributes to be used in evaluating website usability. The findings of this research also could be used by website developer and government agencies to develop a better plan to enhance the website usability

Metodología de evaluación de usabilidad para sistemas de información basados en Web

La Web se ha convertido actualmente en el medio más popular y masivo para la divulgación de todo tipo de información textual y multimedia, incluyendo la suministrada por los Sistemas de Información basados en la Web (Web Based Information Systems, WIS), los cuales van desde pequeños servicios a aplicaciones corporativas a gran escala. Un WIS es un paradigma de sistemas de comunicación que consiste en un sistema de información respaldado por bases de datos, realizado y distribuido sobre la Web para ofrecer procesamiento interactivo de información y servicios que acceden en forma concurrente y remota. Para este tipo de sistemas no es suficiente la interactividad sobre sus funciones, sino que sean usables, y la usabilidad que demuestren es un factor importante de calidad, eficiencia, seguridad y éxito. Sin embargo existen varias limitaciones en las propuestas actuales de evaluación de usabilidad Web, donde el concepto de usabilidad se soporta parcialmente y aunque utilizan modelos de usabilidad y técnicas comunes en la recolección de datos no se ha logrado establecer un acuerdo respecto a los criterios de evaluación, ni respecto a los estándares establecidos. Luego, no hay un modelo generalmente aceptado en la comunidad académica para la evaluación de usabilidad de sistemas de información en general, como tampoco para sistemas de información basados en la Web (WIS). Esta tesis tiene como objetivo, proponer una metodología de evaluación de usabilidad para sistemas de información basadas en la Web (WIS) en operación. La metodología se basa en la evaluación de usabilidad por parte del usuario, desde las perspectivas de medición empírica de desempeño e indagación individual, y utilizando un modelo de evaluación propuesto compuesto por dos sub-modelos que integran los dos enfoques de usabilidad actualmente utilizados: usabilidad como proceso de uso y usabilidad como producto en uso desde la perspectiva de sistema Web. El primer sub-modelo se encuentra basado en la integración de las dimensiones y medidas propuestas en ampliaciones de los modelos del estándar ISO/IEC 9241-11 (1998) y de Nielsen (1989) reportadas por diversos autores en la literatura. De la misma forma, el segundo sub-modelo se encuentra basado en la integración de dimensiones y medidas propuestas en ampliaciones de los modelos de los estándares ISO/IEC 9126 (2001) e ISO/IEC 25000 (SQuaRE (2010) junto con las dimensiones y medidas planteadas para aplicaciones Web y provenientes de modelos de desarrollo Web dentro del contexto de arquitectura dirigida por modelos. Esta integración de medidas y dimensiones se hizo atendiendo al planteamiento de Dennis (1998) quien afirma que un WIS es un sistema de información y como segunda instancia un sistema Web. La metodología de evaluación fue validada empíricamente mediante el desarrollo de un estudio de caso. El objetivo del estudio empírico fue evaluar la efectividad, eficiencia, facilidad de uso percibida y satisfacción percibida de los usuarios participantes cuando utilizaron la metodología de evaluación propuesta en comparación con la evaluación heurística (HE), método de inspección ampliamente utilizado en la industria. El análisis de los datos obtenidos en la aplicación de los dos métodos mostró que la metodología de evaluación de usabilidad para WIS propuesta y HE obtuvieron la misma medida de percepción de usabilidad de los usuarios, pero que la metodología de evaluación de usabilidad propuesta fue más eficaz, eficiente, fácil de usar y más satisfactoria en su uso que HE. Desde una perspectiva práctica, la validación empírica realizada sólo proporciona resultados preliminares sobre la utilidad de la metodología de evaluación propuesta ya que solo son válidos en el contexto establecido en el caso de estudio. Por lo tanto para poder concluir sobre la utilidad general de los sub-modelos de evaluación de usabilidad y de la metodología propuesta es necesario efectuar más estudios empíricos en otros contextos.Maestrí

A cross-cultural study of the relation between users´ cognitive style, context of use, and information architecture of local websites

Increasing globalization and technological development has led companies and people across the globe to connect through the global internet community. However, people with different cultural backgrounds may perceive the same information in different ways. One of the hurdles to use websites efficiently is the indifferent structures of information on website, and their relation with the characteristics of intended users and the context of use for the websites. The purpose of this dissertation is to assist HumanNComputer Interaction (HCI) practitioners and researchers with better design of website structures for user groups with different cultural backgrounds. This dissertation looks into issues related to website user experience (UX) and focus on how the structuring of information is seen from local users’ perspectives. In particular, it attempts to look into the alignment between websites’ information architecture (IA) and users’ views of website information structure, by applying a crossNcultural and context of use perspective on the UX of websites in three countries: Pakistan, Malaysia, and Denmark. The researcher investigates to what degree users’ cognitive styles and contexts of use are aligned with local websites’ information architecture, and how this (lack of) alignment shapes the resulting UX