Heuristics for Evaluating Multi-Touch Gestures in Mobile Applications

Abstract

Multi-touch gesture interaction is one of the main features that differentiate the current smart mobile era from the desktop-computing era. Heuristic evaluation is a popular usability evaluation method, mainly due to being less time-consuming, more cost effective, and applicable to different stages of the design and development phases. Researchers have provided their own sets of heuristics targeting domain specific mobile applications or some specific features (e.g., contextual behaviour). In this work, we specifically target evaluating multi-touch gestures in mobile apps through a set of 15 heuristics, which we selected after analysing previously proposed sets of heuristics. However, we adjusted these selected heuristics to make them appropriate for evaluating multi-touch gestures. We conducted a preliminary study with five evaluators in which they were able to find out more usability problems related to multi-touch gestures in the used mobile app compared to a previously proposed heuristics set for mobile apps. Heuristic evaluation. Usability evaluation. Multi-touch gestures. Mobile apps. Smart mobile devices.

Set of Usability Heuristics for Quality Assessment of Mobile Applications on Smartphones

“…The results obtained during the systematic literature review allowed the present work to identify some studies, such as the primary studies cited in the answer to the first question of research (RQ.1) of the SLR (Billiet al [52], Inostroza et al [14], Neto and Pimentel [48], Silva et al [28], Inostroza et al [49], Ajibola and Goosen [53] and Humayoun et al [50]), which propose heuristics focused on the context of mobile applications, evidencing that there is little research related in the area and also that there is a gap, allowing space for new contributions.…”

“…Humayoun et al [50] propose a set of 15 heuristics focused on mobile applications that use multi-touch gestures (sixth line of Table 2). Based on the heuristic evaluation conducted by the authors, they concluded that through the proposed set of heuristics, the evaluators were able to find more usability problems than other heuristic proposals also focused on mobile applications, such as the paper of Joyce and Lilley [51], which also proposes a set of heuristics focused on the mobile context.…”

“…Humayoun et al [50] conducted a heuristic evaluation with five expert evaluators in the field of computer science. The evaluation was conducted so that the evaluators were given a small training of 30 to 60 minutes to become familiar with the method.…”

“…Studies that justify its use: Billi et al [52], Inostroza et al [14], Neto and Pimentel [48], Gómez et al [42], Inostroza et al [49] and Humayoun et al [50].…”

“…Studies that justify its use: Inostroza et al [14], Inostroza et al [49], Ajibola and Goosen [53] and Humayoun et al [50] 8) UH8 -EFFICIENCY OF USE AND PERFORMANCE Definition: The device must be able to load and display information in a reasonable amount of time and minimize the steps required to perform a task (number of steps to be taken by the user to reach a goal). Animations and transitions should display smoothly.…”