Since the release of the first mobile devices, the usability of on-board applications has been the concern not only of software vendors but hardware manufacturers as well. The academia community later willingly joined the discussion on usability in terms of theory and empirical measurement, having experience and knowledge in desktop settings. At first sight, such a background should guarantee a solid foundation to conduct research on software usability in a new setting. However, a preliminary study on the subject matter revealed methodological disorder in contemporary literature. As a matter of fact, a need emerged to review existing usability definitions, attributes and measures to recognize all associated aspects. In order to fill this void, we conducted a systematic literature review on usability studies indexed by the Scopus database and devoted to mobile applications. The input volume covers 790 documents from 2001 to 2018. The data analysis shows that the ISO 9241-11 usability definition has been adopted in an unchanged form and popularized as the standard by the HCI community. Secondly, in total, 75 attributes were identified and analysed. The most frequent are efficiency (70%), satisfaction (66%) and effectiveness (58%), which directly originate from the above definition. Subsequently, the less frequent are learnability (45%), memorability (23%), cognitive load (19%) and errors (17%). The last two concern simplicity (13%) and ease of use (9%). Thirdly, in the evaluation of usability, controlled observation and surveys are two major research methods applied, while eye-tracking, thinking aloud and interview are hardly used and serve as complementary to collect additional data. Moreover, usability evaluations are often confused with user experience dimensions, covering not only application quality characteristics, but also user beliefs, emotions and preferences. All these results indicate the need for further research on the usability of mobile applications, aiming to establish a consensus in the theory and practice among all interested parties.

Communicating mobile security threats and best practices has become a central objective due to the ongoing discovery of new vulnerabilities of mobile devices. To cope with this overarching issue, the goal of this paper is to identify and analyze existing threats and best practices in the domain of mobile security. To this extent, we conducted a literature review based on a set of keywords. The obtained results concern recognizable threats and established best practices in the domain of mobile security. Afterwards, this outcome was put forward for consideration by mobile application users (n = 167) via a survey instrument. To this end, the results show high awareness of the threats and their countermeasures in the domain of mobile applications. While recognizing the risks associated with physical and social factors, the majority of respondents declared the use of built-in methods to mitigate the negative impact of malicious software and social-engineering scams. The study results contribute to the theory on mobile security through the identification and exploration of a variety of issues, regarding both threats and best practices. Besides this, this bulk of up-to-date knowledge has practical value which reflects in its applicability at both the individual and enterprise level. Moreover, at this point, we argue that understanding the factors affecting users’ intentions and motivations to accept and use particular technologies is crucial to leverage the security of mobile applications. Therefore, future work will cover identifying and modeling users’ perceptions of the security and usability of mobile applications.

Software usability plays a major role in the quality perceived by its users. However, a variety of definitions and associated attributes shows that there is still no consensus in this area. The overall purpose of this paper is to present the results of a critical and rigorous literature review, the aim of which is to demonstrate all the relevant usability definitions and related attributes introduced till now. This comprehensive view, depicted by a time-framed knowledge map, provides an indepth understanding of the observed evolution on the one hand, and also serves as a guide for usability engineers to address some non-functional requirements, on the other.

Abstract-Considering different aspects of knowledge functioning, context is poorly understood in spite of intuitively identifying this concept with environmental recognition. For dynamic knowledge, context especially seems to be an essential factor of change. Investigation on the impact of context on knowledge dynamics or more generally on the relationship between knowledge and its contextual interpretation is important in order to understand knowledge dynamics. The aim of this paper is to research and examine the nature of knowledge transformation (a specific sort of life-cycle), and to identify contextual factors affecting knowledge dynamics.

Nowadays, we face a huge amount of data and information sharing on the Web by different users worldwide. A multidimensional perspective in describing a university ontology seems to be very important for the modelling of higher education resources. This paper proposes a multi-dimensional knowledge model, designed to distribute and manage knowledge resources efficiently. We propose our model as the foundation of an advanced knowledge platform including the following dimensions: time, area and social. Three crucial domains should be considered in this model: educational, research and managerial. The ontology including the mentioned knowledge management aspects is prepared using Ontorion Fluent Editor.

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Abstract-In this paper we present the results of a study that aims to evaluate the usability of three selected web services, based on eye-tracking and thinking aloud techniques. The gathered comments and observations, recapitulated and supported by particular measures, allow us to discover and describe typical user behavior pertaining to given tasks to solve.

On the surface, one might think that revealing the factors that impact on software product usability and the success of an entire project would be relatively simple; however, reported evidence from practitioners and scholars frequently shows the opposite. The aim of this study was to determine factors with a positive (negative) impact on delivering usability in a software product and the success (failure) of an entire project. This paper presents the results of our study, where 11 factors were identified and described, along with an outline of 11 goal-oriented rules incorporating the expertise and knowledge of project managers. The elaborated body of knowledge, positively evaluated by IT professionals, would seem to be a valuable asset during the risk analysis performed before the kick-off of a project as well as in understanding the notion of usability.