A Systematic Mapping Review of Usability Evaluation Methods for Software Development Process

Abstract

Given that usability is one of the most important aspects of software quality, several methods have been developed in order to establish techniques capable of evaluating this attribute from early phases of the software development process. However, the choice of the most appropriate method for a particular scenario is still a difficult decision, due to the existence of a vast number of approaches that are described in the literature for this purpose. Therefore, a systematic mapping review was conducted in order to identify the most commonly used usability evaluation techniques in software developments. A total of 1169 studies were identified, of which only 215 studies were selected for this review. According to the analysis, most cases studies establish the use of usability questionnaires as assessment tool. In addition, health informatics and Web applications are the software domain and type of application that are frequently reported in these evaluations. This work has allowed to reach promising results in this area. It is intended to be a guide for specialists to support the choice of the most suitable method for a particular scenario.

Evaluation of mobile applications for fitness training and physical activity in healthy low-trained people - A modular interdisciplinary framework

“…"Nowadays, usability is considered one of the most important aspects for the success of any technological product" (Paz & Pow-Sang, 2016, p.165). The top-5 methods for usability assessment comprising more than 70% of the applications are: questionnaires, user testing, heuristic evaluation, interview, and thinking aloud (Paz & Pow-Sang, 2016). The concept of user experiences denotes a broader approach than usability, including the (meta-)cognitive and emotional experiences of users when interacting with ICT within a specific context (Lallemand, Gronier & Koenig, 2015).…”

Validation in the Web Domain of a Formal Process to Evaluate the Usability of Software Applications: An Approach based on the Heuristic Inspection

“…In a previous work [6], we conducted a systematic literature review to identify the most used methods to measure the degree of usability of software products. The heuristic evaluation was the third most relevant technique after the user testing and the questionnaire.…”

“…From the resulting papers of our systematic literature review, only those that illustrated in a way or another the use of the heuristic evaluation were considered. The list of papers is detailed in [6], but the new studies from 2016 that were incorporated to our analysis are [4], [5], [24], [29], [18], [14], [2] and [31]. The new evaluation process was structured in five phases according to the framework established by Hurtado et al [27] for usability inspection methods.…”

Validation of a Usability Evaluation Protocol based on the Heuristic Inspection Method: An Experimental Case Study in the Web Domain

“…The author of the heuristic evaluation method only provides general recommendations to carry out this technique [10]. For this reason, we proposed a formal process based on a previous work [6], which involved the conduction of a systematic mapping review of the usability evaluation methods that were used during the last three years to develop software products. From these results, only those studies that reported the use of the heuristic evaluation method were analyzed.…”

“…In this work, we present the validation of a formal framework to conduct heuristic evaluations in the context of software products. This usability evaluation protocol was developed with basis on a previous systematic literature review [6].…”