Heuristic Evaluation: Comparing Generic and Specific Usability Heuristics for Identification of Usability Problems in a Living Museum Mobile Guide App

Abstract

This paper reports on an empirical study that compares two sets of heuristics, Nielsen’s heuristics and the SMART heuristics in the identification of usability problems in a mobile guide smartphone app for a living museum. Five experts used the severity rating scales to identify and determine the severity of the usability issues based on the two sets of usability heuristics. The study found that Nielsen’s heuristics set is too general to detect usability problems in a mobile application compared to SMART heuristics which focuses on the smartphone application in the product development lifecycle instead of the generic Nielsen’s heuristics which focuses on a wide range of interactive system. The study highlights the importance of utilizing domain specific usability heuristics in the evaluation process. This ensures that relevant usability issues were successfully identified which could then be given immediate attention to ensure optimal user experience.

Having a Smarter City through Digital Urban Interfaces: An Evaluation Method

“…As previously explained, the use of generic proposals requires steps be taken to try to bend and adapt the existing proposals identified in the literature review to problems and situations that are exclusive to the realm of urban interfaces. Additionally, as mentioned by Othman [19], González-Holland [76] and Bader [21], many of the proposals reviewed in the literature were developed prior to the invention of different technologies that exist today.…”

“…Different heuristics and guidelines already exist to evaluate the usability of an interactive system, however these proposals do not specialize in urban interfaces. Although it is possible to adapt them to evaluate interfaces of this type, authors such as Othman [19] or Law [20] espouse tailor-made heuristics for testing specialized interfaces and explain why it is important to avoid using 'generic' heuristics. The purpose of this, as explained by Bader [21], is to ensure a more effective process is available.…”

“…Although all these heuristics, guidelines and principles are useful for designing user-centered interfaces, they are not tailored to many of the situations affecting an urban interface, as detailed in the objectives and hypothesis of this article. Authors such as Law [33], Hvannberg [20] and, more recently, Othman [19] have explained that the use of heuristics and guidelines specifically tailored to certain contexts helps to evaluate interfaces that have a set of unique characteristics, as in the case of urban interfaces. This being said, the literature review has revealed that the referenced authors fail to contemplate certain angles that must be considered in the case of urban interfaces.…”

“…In the case of urban interfaces, as they serve an enabling element within the digital transformation [19,47] of a city, it is possible to infer that the design or acquisition of these should be focused on people, more than on business or market trends [48]. As such, there should be a set of specialized guidelines in place for urban interfaces that permits user experience testing involving actual users.…”

Incorporating Heuristic Evaluation (HE) in the Evaluation of Visual Design of the Eco-Tourism Smartphone App

“…This is an important criterion in the design of multimedia content for mobile applications. It has been proposed that tourists who use a smartphone app while visiting a cultural heritage site are more immersed than those not equipped with a smartphone app [1]. Many touristic attractions have successfully encouraged the usage of mobile devices such as smartphone apps to enhance their visitors' experience before, during, and after their visit, be it for travel purposes [2][3][4], tourism branding [5,6], destination management [7,8], or smart tourism [4,6,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15] among others.…”