André de Lima Salgado

Heuristic Evaluation of Mobile Usability: A Mapping Study

The mobile devices market has grown substantially, along with significant developments in mobile interactive technologies. Devices such as tablets, smartphones and others have increasingly become more popular and helped improve the way people interact and exchange information. The aim of this paper is to perform a systematic mapping of the literature regarding the use of heuristic evaluation methods applied on mobile applications. The aims of this research were twofold: analysing what are the most used sets of usability heuristics on usability evaluations of mobile devices, providing a common base to improve mobile design and usability evaluation; analysing details of how usability inspections of mobile applications have been conducted. The results show that different heuristics have been reported in research papers to evaluate usability of mobile devices. The study identified a total of 9 different heuristics sets means of the literature mapping. The traditional set of heuristics proposed by Nielsen and Molich was still the most used set of heuristics in heuristic usability evaluations of mobile devices, but the proposal of new specific heuristics for mobile interfaces has grown substantially.

Evolving Heuristic Evaluation for multiple contexts and audiences: Perspectives from a mapping study

This paper presents the results concerning an update of a previous mapping study about usability heuristics applied in Heuristic Evaluation of mobile usability. Heuristic Evaluation is a popular method of usability evaluation, and its applicability to inspect the mobile usability may be improved by the development of context and audience specific heuristics. Additionally to a previous mapping, we present analysis of the recent usage of context and audience specific heuristics, and the application of Heuristic Evaluation to evaluate multiple contexts and audiences. The results showed the use of specific heuristics for the Healthy context and Malaysian audience. In addition, the results turned out the evolving of Heuristic Evaluation for multiple contexts and audiences, such as: Health Sector, Games, Learning, Elderly and Accessibility.

Addressing Mobile Usability and Elderly Users: Validating Contextualized Heuristics

Diverse heuristic sets were proposed in order to evolve Heuristic Evaluation for new contexts, as contexts related to the elderly and mobile devices. However, heuristics for evaluation of mobile usability regarding elderly users still need aditional validations. For this reason, our study aimed to enhance the validation of a heuristic set proposed by Al-Razgan et al. for evaluation of mobile usability regarding elderly users. Results showed that the major part of heuristics proposed by Al-Razgan et al. matches with traditional heuristics of Nielsen, while a few remain valuable for evaluations in this context. Also, after validations, we found evidences that the heuristics of Al-Razgan et al. have a great coverage of usability problems of mobile applications used by the elderly, as detected from test with users.

Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Evaluators

Adapting the method of Heuristic Evaluation for novice evaluators can capacitate organizations of low monetary power that, usually, do not have conditions to resort to experts. In one of the courses given by the authors, 12 in 15 novice evaluators (80 %) said they had difficulties to distinguish the difference among the traditional usability heuristics. The aim of this study was to explore this affirmation and develop possible adaptations in order to mitigate this problem. Surveys with 13 usability experts and 15 novice evaluators showed that the 3rd and the 7th heuristics, from the traditional set of Nielsen and Molich, are probably more difficult for novices to understand and distinguish between each other. In a third survey, with 7 usability experts, we discussed a new description for heuristics 3 and 7 in order to make them easier for novice evaluators to understand and distinguish. Future studies can validate of the adaptations proposed here.

Toys and Mobile Applications: Current Trends and Related Privacy Issues

A toy is a product that is intended for play. Common examples of toys include dolls, board games and video games. Based on the reports from the 110th Annual American International Toy Fair, toy manufacturers are increasingly incorporating mobile applications into their products through smartphones. This technological advancement gives users the opportunity to augment the physical world as they play through a user interface of information services. These toys capture the user’s physical activity state (e.g., walking, standing, running, etc.) and store personalized information (e.g., location, activity pattern, etc.) through the mobile device. By adding a digital component onto an analog device, a greater potential for a more personalized and dynamic play experience, such as augmented reality, is unlocked. In addition, this play experience can be further modified after point of sale through a developer’s content or update release through their digital service. As smartphones and mobile applications play a larger role in the everyday lives of their users, toy manufacturers commonly face the challenge of better understanding the modern consumer’s needs as well as their concerns. Issues such as privacy and data encryption, which were not common problems in the toy industry, are suddenly becoming necessary due to these trends. This book chapter also discusses a case study of toy guns in Brazil.

Usability and UX practices in small enterprises: lessons from a survey of the Brazilian context

The role of small and medium enterprises (SME), especially small businesses, has significantly increased in the developing of interactive applications. Given the relevance of these companies in the market, the adoption of usability and user experience (UX) practices in these organizations is fundamental for the improvement of interactive systems. This paper performed a survey with 26 Brazilian small businesses of software about their Usability and UX practices. The results showed that Usability Tests and Heuristic Evaluation were the evaluation methods most frequently reported to be used by the surveyed companies. Although the results suggest an improvement in the adoption of usability and UX practices, they also show the need for significant improvement in training and awareness of the importance of usability and UX and appropriating techniques and practices in the context of small businesses. Our results showed a low use of accessibility evaluation methods, such as tests with disabled users (no mention) or even the use of automated tools to check initial aspects of accessibility (mentioned by only 3.85% of respondents) by the companies surveyed. It also showed that the companies surveyed relies many times on professionals of low experience for the conduction of Usability Tests and Heuristic Evaluation.

Accessibility and Usability Evaluation of Rich Internet Applications

Popularity of Internet applications has reached significant scales. In consequence, a wide diversity of solutions has been created based on Web features. Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a relevant term adopted for technological advances in software developed for the Web, which refers to Web applications aimed to provide users with a desktop similar experience. RIAs usually have wider capabilities in comparison with traditional hypertext applications, specially regarding to the interactive elements of their interfaces. New possibilities that have emerged from RIA are essential to support relevant aspects of Web 2.0, such as participation and collaboration. As among other applications, developing accessible and usable RIAs is a valuable and fundamental aspect for development teams, since these new interaction features available on the Web are not always accessible for people with disabilities or reduced mobility. For this reason, this mini-course aims to present the main concepts usually used to evaluate accessibility and usability of RIA; it is an overview of perspectives about practices and theoretical references, from Standards for Quality up to the implementation resources of Web applications. The approach of this mini-course covered practices on main RIA coding techniques, and methods of usability and accessibility evaluation as Guidelines Review and Heuristic Evaluation. Moreover, this mini-course was developed aiming newcomers and professionals that want to specialize their skills on the development and evaluation of usable and accessible RIAs.

Guiding Usability Newcomers to Understand the Context of Use: Towards Models of Collaborative Heuristic Evaluation

Usability inspection methods are liable to the expertise effect among distinct evaluators. Hence, understanding the difficulties faced by evaluators of low expertise (novices and newcomers) is a requirement to move forward in the field. However, the following question remains: Which of the terms that compose usability (User, Goal, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Satisfaction, Context of Use and Task) is the most difficult for newcomers to understand? This exploratory study aims to compare usability newcomers’ difficulties on understanding different terms that compose the usability, based on the definition showed by the ISO/IEC 25066. To achieve this goal, we conducted a survey with 38 usability newcomers. Observations on our survey show the Context of Use may be the most difficult term to be understood by newcomers. Thus, we suggest the adoption of scenarios, storyboards, and domain-specific principles as the basis for newcomers in HEs, when practitioners cannot count on experts for the inspection. In addition, we suggest three (3) different models of Collaborative Heuristic Evaluation aimed to provide newcomers with important insights about Context of Use. Finally, we suggest as future works to study the validity of such models.

Game Accessibility Evaluation Methods: A Literature Survey

Identifying a set of methods to be applied specifically for game accessibility evaluation is a relevant issue to boost and enable further research in the field. To fulfill this objective, we defined five research questions and conducted a literature survey based on snowballing technique. To gather the studies in our survey, we defined a start set of works to serve as ground for the review and performed searches using references and citations of these studies. We found a set of accessibility evaluation methods focused on game accessibility and how they can be classified according to ISO standards. We also found that methods focused on mobile game context still need to be better explored because only a few evidences were retrieved regarding such a domain. Besides traditional accessibility aspects as barriers and users’ satisfaction, results show that distinct game aspects are considered during game accessibility evaluations. In addition, the most part of works refers to evaluation of exergames or games related to users’ mobility. Studies also refer to evaluations regarding more than one category of impairment, especially motor and visual impairments. Future researches in the field should focus on inspection-based methods, because traditional user-based methods have been largely referred as applicable to game accessibility context.

Designing for Parental Control: Enriching Usability and Accessibility in the Context of Smart Toys

Designing usable parental control interfaces remains as a challenge in the field. This chapter reviewed traditional Human-Computer Interaction methods, with examples focused on Parental Control interfaces in the context of Smart Toys, aiming practitioners from security and privacy area. We reviewed stages of the User Centered Design (UCD) with greater attention to the evaluation stage. Thus, we detailed activities of evaluation such as: User Testing, Usability Inspection, Accessibility Inspection and Automated Accessibility Testing Tools. Also, we suggested directions for the development of new methods of UCD focused on the context of Smart Toys. Finally, we discussed future trends in the context of Smart Toys: designing for elderly healthcare and interfaces of family control.