Systematic literature review in Usability Web: A tertiary study

Abstract

Web usability is a topic that several researchers have studied; this is because, with new technological advances, it is possible to improve application interfaces significantly and have usable products that captivate users by being friendly, efficient and easy to use. In this sense, reviewing secondary studies reported in this field is considered appropriate. This review aims to identify the methods and/or usability evaluation and validation methodologies, in what phase of development and software domain it has been evaluated, and the problems reported in literature reviews. The applied method is the one proposed by Kitchenham and Charters (2007) for the presentation of tertiary studies, beginning with the planning phase, which includes the activities: definition of research questions, search strategies, criteria for article selection, procedure for the inclusion or exclusion of studies and, criteria to assess the quality of investigations; followed by the review phase, in which the defined planning is carried out, the activities that include: execution of the selection of studies in the digital libraries, evaluation of the quality of the studies, extraction of relevant data and synthesis of the information; and finally the reporting phase, in which the answers to the research questions posed are evidenced. Regarding the results, we found a total of 106 articles, eliminated the duplicates, reviewed the rest and selected 15 papers, in which we identified the most frequently reported evaluation methods and methodologies, such as the Heuristic method, Observational measurement / Inspection and User test/usability tests. Likewise, we found the most commonly reported problems, such as Accessibility issues, Usability measurement and Methodological problems. Also, we distinguish that usability tests have been reported with a higher incidence in Web applications and Educational. Usability evaluation is applied in the different phases of software development, but with other incidences. Finally, we conclude that there is potential for more SLR about the usability of web applications.