Towards a Usability Measurement Framework for Process Modelling Tools

Usability is widely used in software engineering as a criterion of product quality and acceptance. Studies revealed that one dollar investment in usability brings 10 times more profit than investments in advertising. Usability of websites and desktop applications has been extensively investigated during the last decades. However, little was done in the area of usability of process modelling tools. We argue that generic usability measurement frameworks do not reflect the particularities of this type of applications. In our research-in-progress paper we have conducted a number of empirical studies in order to determine environment dimensions and their effect on usability attributes. As a result we propose a theoretical usability measurement framework whose underlying hypotheses will be evaluated in future research

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

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

Towards a Methodology and a Tool for Modeling Clinical Pathways

AbstractNowadays hospitals face the problem of increasing quality and at the same time reducing costs of their services. Clinical pathways approach has established itself as an effective method of reorganization of medical practice in a process-oriented way. Since more than a decade, clinical pathways are being created and applied in hospitals in the USA, Australia, and European countries. Traditional text-based approach for documenting clinical pathways does not allow automatic analysis and makes the maintenance of the models inefficient. Recently, researchers started to apply generic modeling languages, such as UML activity diagrams, EPC or BPMN, as well as domain specific process modeling languages, in order to formalize the representation of clinical pathways. However, none of these languages sufficiently covers the requirements of clinical pathway models, and the choice of a suitable modeling technique remains a problem. In this paper, we propose a modeling methodology and a modeling tool for creating graphical semantically annotated models of clinical pathways. We take into account the characteristics and usage scenarios of clinical pathways and show, how the proposed approach addresses these requirements