Abstract
Usability studies found that mobile users suffer from poor user experience which might explain the low spending of mobile-based commerce (m-commerce). This study focuses on identifying the usability heuristics to apply when evaluating the usability of m-commerce mobile apps. An integrated approach is applied considering the general usability heuristics developed by Nielsen, the Google Android design guidelines and Apple human interface guidelines. The proposed 13 heuristics are: “Visibility”, “Matching-Real-World”, “User-Control”, “Error-Prevention”, “Recognition”, “Flexibility-and-Efficient Use”, “Minimal Design”, “Diagnose-and-Recover”, “Help”, “Performance”, “Information–and-Visual-Hierarchy”, “Natural-Interaction”, and “Dynamic-Engagement”. Four usability experts test empirically the developed mobile usability heuristics against two mobile apps that are used for secondhand retailing where users can sell and buy used items. Usability violations are identified and severity is ranked. Mobile apps usability is an ever evolving and dynamic research playground. Many of research challenges posed by lack of a comprehensive tool to understand the usability in the context of m-commerce. This is the contribution of the present paper.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alsumait, A., Al-Osaimi, A.: Usability heuristics evaluation for child elearning applications. J. Softw. 5(6), 654–661 (2010)
Android: Google Android Design Guidelines. https://developer.android.com/design/index.html. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Apple: Human Interface Guidelines. https://developer.apple.com/design/. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Baker, K., Greenberg, S., Gutwin, C.: Empirical development of a heuristics evaluation methodology for shared workspace groupware. In: Proceedings of the ACM CSCW 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, November, pp. 96–105 (2002)
Bertin, E., Gabrielli, S., Kimani, S.: Appropriating and assessing heuristics for mobile computing. In: Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2006), pp. 119–126. ACM, New York, May 2006
Bevan, N., Macleod, M.: Usability measurement in context. Behav. Inf. Technol. 13, 132–145 (1994)
Bevan, N.: What is the difference between the purpose of usability and user experience evaluation methods. UXEM 2009 Workshop, INTERACT 2009, Uppsala (2009)
Desurvire, H., Caplan, D., Toth, J.: Using heuristics to improve the playability of games. In: CHI Conference, 2004. Vienna, Austria, April 2004. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardkestenbaum/2017/04/11/fashion-retailers-have-to-adapt-to-deal-with-secondhand-clothes-sold-online/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Forbes: Fashion Retailers Have To Adapt To Deal With Secondhand Clothes Sold Online (2017). www.forbes.com. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Göransson, B., Gulliksen, J., Boivie, I.: The usability design process – integrating user-centered systems design in the software development process. Software Process Improvement and Practice 8, 111–131 (2003)
Griffiths, S.: Mobile App UX Principles. 2015. https://storage.googleapis.com/think-emea/docs/article/Mobile_App_UX_Principles.pdf. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Harrison, R., Flood, D., Duce, D.: Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale of a new usability model. Journal of Interaction Science 1(1), 1 (2013)
ISO 9241-11: Guidelines for Specifying and Measuring usability (1998)
Letgo: 2018. www.letgo.com
Madrigal, D. McClain, B.: Usability of mobile devices: insights from research. https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/09/usability-for-mobile-devices.php. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Mobile Commerce Daily: More Than Half of Consumers Dissatisfied with Mobile Retail Experiences: Adobe. https://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/more-than-half-of-shoppers-are-dissatisfied-with-mobile-retail-experiences-adobe. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Nielsen, J.: Heuristic evaluation. In: Nielsen, J., Mack, R.L. (eds.) Usability Inspection Methods. Wiley, New York (1994)
Nielsen, J.: Severity Rankings for Usability Problems. http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/severityrating.html. Accessed 28 Feb 2018
Nielsen, J.: Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann, San Diego (1993). Offerup.2018. www.OfferUp.com
Nielsen, J.: Finding usability problems through heuristics evaluation. In: CHI 1992, pp. 373–380. ACM Press, New York (1992)
Quettra: Losing 80% of mobile users is normal, and why the best apps do better (2015). https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/losing-80-mobile-users-normal-why-best-apps-do-better-andrew-chen
Po, S.: Mobile usability testing and evaluation. Master’s thesis, University of Melbourne,Australia (2003)
Seffah, A., Donyaee, M., Kline, R., Padda, H.: Usability measurement and metrics: a consolidated model. Softw. Qual. J. 14, 159–178 (2005)
Somervell, J., Wahid, S., McCrickard, D.: Usability heuristics for large screen information exhibits. In: Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction (Interact 2003) Zurigo, Svizzera, pp. 904–907 (2003)
Statista: Mobile commerce in the United States - Statistics & Facts (2018). https://www.statista.com/topics/1185/mobile-commerce/
Sutcliff, A., Gault, B.: Heuristics evaluation of virtual reality applications. Inter. Comput. 16, 381–849 (2004)
Swaid, S., Maat, M., Krishnan, H., Ghoshal, D., Ramakrishnan, L.: Usability heuristics of data analyses and visualization tools. In: 8th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2017), Los Angeles, California, USA, 17–21 July 2017
Trivedi, M., Khanum, M.: Role of context in usability evaluations: a review. Adv. Comput. Int. J. (ACIJ) 3, 2 (2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Swaid, S.I., Suid, T.Z. (2019). Usability Heuristics for M-Commerce Apps. In: Ahram, T., Falcão, C. (eds) Advances in Usability, User Experience and Assistive Technology. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 794. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94947-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94947-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94946-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94947-5
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)