Assessing refactorings for usability in e-commerce applications

Abstract

Refactoring has been reported as a helpful technique to systematically improve nonfunctional attributes of software. This paper evaluates the relevance of refactoring for improving usability on web applications. We conducted an experiment with two replications at different locations, with subjects of different profiles. Objects chosen for the experiment were two e-commerce applications that exhibit common business processes in today's web usage. Through the experiment we found that half of the studied refactorings cause a significant improvement in usability. The rest of the refactorings required a post-hoc analysis in which we Empir Software Eng considered aspects like user expertise in the interaction with web applications or type of application. We conclude that, when improving quality in use, the success of the refactoring process depends on several factors, including the type of software system, context and users. We have analyzed all these aspects, which developers must consider for a better decision support at the time of prioritizing improvements and outweighing effort.

Integrated Approach to e-Commerce Websites Evaluation with the Use of Surveys and Eye Tracking Based Experiments

“…In June 2016 there were 12 million stores online, however only 650 thousands of them (5.4%) sold more than $1,000 per year [4]. With such hot competition, entrepreneurs try to increase their chances by marketing and using analytic tools [5], refactoring the usability of the website and its assessment [6], providing web content accessibility [7] or ascertaining credibility of the website [8]. The credibility is the perception of being trustworthy and believable and it can be built, among other things, by providing great user experience and high levels of usability and quality [8].…”

Investigating the effect of m-commerce design usability on customers’ trust

“…On the other hand, m-commerce has extensively developed to include various functionalities for empowering customers' usage experience while searching on product in their mobile which some researchers still consider it to be in in its infancy stage [2][3][4]. Meanwhile, numerous studies have been conducted to determine the effect of e-commerce usability on customers' impressions of organizations [5][6][7]. According to Jakimoski [8], there is a limited studies in examining the usability of mobile apps for performing commerce related activities.…”

Self-Refactoring: mejoras automáticas de usabilidad para aplicaciones web

“…En trabajos siguientes, se desarrolló un framework que permite aplicar refactorings de usabilidad del lado del cliente, reduciendo el costo de alterar un sistema en producción del lado del server (Garrido, Firmenich, et al, 2013). También se desarrolló un catálogo con nuevos usability refactorings y usability smells (Distante et al, 2014 Además se han realizado tests estadísticos para medir la verdadera ventaja que ofrecen los refactorings en los aspectos de usabilidad en uso: efectividad en uso, eficiencia en uso y satisfacción en uso (Grigera et al, 2016), con resultados positivos estadísticamente significativos en la mitad de los refactorings evaluados para al menos un aspecto (en el Capítulo 7 se explicará en detalle). Para la preparación del experimento, la detección de usability smells no fue tarea sencilla, dado que requirió intervención manual de expertos para revisar los resultados de tests de usuario conducidos para tal fin.…”

“…A partir de los problemas hallados en la etapa de detección de usability smells, es posible sugerir soluciones en forma de refactorings de usabilidad, para que los desarrolladores puedan ir aplicando soluciones incrementalmente a los problemas reportados. Gracias a los catálogos preexistentes que sirvieron como punto de partida (Garrido, Firmenich, et al, 2013;Grigera et al, 2016), conectar los problemas (usability smells) con las soluciones (usability refactorings) no es una tarea compleja.…”

“…¿Está permitido?"). En las experiencias durante la investigación para este trabajo, por ejemplo, se halló que empleado calendarios en vez de campos de texto para fechas puede mejorar la satisfacción en el uso, en el contexto de sitios de e-commerce (Grigera et al, 2016).…”