An evaluation framework for mobile user interfaces

Visual Languages and …, 2009

In current mobile user interface design tools, it is time consuming to export a design to the target device. This makes it hard for designers to iterate over the user interfaces they are creating. We propose Gummy-live, a GUI builder for mobile devices allowing designers to test and observe immediately on the target device each step they take in the GUI builder. This way, designers are stimulated to iteratively test and refine user interface prototypes in order to take the target device characteristics into account.

IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2005

Conducting user-centered design is a primary challenge in ubiquitous computing. Two kinds of prototyping techniques can be particularly effective for developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications: compound prototypes and situated experience prototypes. Compound prototypes combine the final product's user interface (UI) with a computational implementation that runs on a separate system without the resource constraints of the target device. This model lets researchers and designers evaluate a new application's physicality and aesthetics as well as its functionality. Situated experience prototypes, or paratypes, include experimental protocols that attempt to reproduce user interaction with the system in real situations, and can optionally use common prototyping instruments such as paper mock-ups or physical props. Using our Personal Audio Loop (PAL) project as a case study, we discuss how you can fruitfully employ compound prototypes and paratypes when designing and developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications.

International Journal of Technology Diffusion, 2012

This study compared usability testing results found with low- and high-fidelity prototypes for mobile phones. The main objective is to obtain deep understanding of usability problems found with different prototyping methods. Three mobile phones from different manufactures were selected in the experiment. The usability level of the mobile phones was evaluated by participants who completed a questionnaire consisting of 13 usability factors. Incorporating the task-based complexity of the three mobile phones, significant differences in the usability evaluation for each individual factor were found. Suggestions on usability testing with prototyping technique for mobile phones were proposed. This study tries to provide new evidence to the field of mobile phone usability research and develop a feasible way to quantitatively evaluate the prototype usability with novices. The comparisons of paper-based and fully functional prototypes led us to realize how significantly the unique characteris...

Symmetry, 2017

Wearable devices are being explored and investigated as a promising computing platform as well as a source of personal big data for the post smartphone era. To deal with a series of rapidly developed wearable prototypes, a well-structured strategy is required to assess the prototypes at various development stages. In this paper, we first design and develop variants of advanced wearable user interface prototypes, including joystick-embedded, potentiometer-embedded, motion-gesture and contactless infrared user interfaces for rapidly assessing hands-on user experience of potential futuristic user interfaces. To achieve this goal systematically, we propose a conceptual test framework and present a case study of using the proposed framework in an iterative cyclic process to prototype, test, analyze, and refine the wearable user interface prototypes. We attempt to improve the usability of the user interface prototypes by integrating initial user feedback into the leading phase of the test framework. In the following phase of the test framework, we track signs of improvements through the overall results of usability assessments, task workload assessments and user experience evaluation of the prototypes. The presented comprehensive and in-depth case study demonstrates that the iterative approach employed by the test framework was effective in assessing and enhancing the prototypes, as well as gaining insights on potential applications and establishing practical guidelines for effective and usable wearable user interface development.

Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Multimodal interfaces - ICMI '03, 2003

Interaction designers are increasingly faced with the challenge of creating interfaces that incorporate multiple input modalities, such as pen and speech, and span multiple devices. Few early stage prototyping tools allow non-programmers to prototype these interfaces. Here we describe CrossWeaver, a tool for informally prototyping multimodal, multidevice user interfaces. This tool embodies the informal prototyping paradigm, leaving design representations in an informal, sketched form, and creates a working prototype from these sketches. CrossWeaver allows a user interface designer to sketch storyboard scenes on the computer, specifying simple multimodal command transitions between scenes. The tool also allows scenes to target different output devices. Prototypes can run across multiple standalone devices simultaneously, processing multimodal input from each one. Thus, a designer can visually create a multimodal prototype for a collaborative meeting or classroom application. CrossWeaver captures all of the user interaction when running a test of a prototype. This input log can quickly be viewed visually for the details of the users' multimodal interaction or it can be replayed across all participating devices, giving the designer information to help him or her analyze and iterate on the interface design.

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JMIR Human Factors

Background: Mobile data collection systems are often difficult to use for nontechnical or novice users. This can be attributed to the fact that developers of such tools do not adequately involve end users in the design and development of product features and functions, which often creates interaction challenges. Objective: The main objective of this study was to assess the guidelines for form design using high-fidelity prototypes developed based on end-user preferences. We also sought to investigate the association between the results from the System Usability Scale (SUS) and those from the Study Tailored Evaluation Questionnaire (STEQ) after the evaluation. In addition, we sought to recommend some practical guidelines for the implementation of the group testing approach particularly in low-resource settings during mobile form design. Methods: We developed a Web-based high-fidelity prototype using Axure RP 8. A total of 30 research assistants (RAs) evaluated this prototype in March 2018 by completing the given tasks during 1 common session. An STEQ comprising 13 affirmative statements and the commonly used and validated SUS were administered to evaluate the usability and user experience after interaction with the prototype. The STEQ evaluation was summarized using frequencies in an Excel sheet while the SUS scores were calculated based on whether the statement was positive (user selection minus 1) or negative (5 minus user selection). These were summed up and the score contributions multiplied by 2.5 to give the overall form usability from each participant. Results: Of the RAs, 80% (24/30) appreciated the form progress indication, found the form navigation easy, and were satisfied with the error messages. The results gave a SUS average score of 70.4 (SD 11.7), which is above the recommended average SUS score of 68, meaning that the usability of the prototype was above average. The scores from the STEQ, on the other hand, indicated a 70% (21/30) level of agreement with the affirmative evaluation statements. The results from the 2 instruments indicated a fair level of user satisfaction and a strong positive association as shown by the Pearson correlation value of .623 (P<.01). Conclusions: A high-fidelity prototype was used to give the users experience with a product they would likely use in their work. Group testing was done because of scarcity of resources such as costs and time involved especially in low-income countries. If embraced, this approach could help assess user needs of the diverse user groups. With proper preparation and the right infrastructure at an affordable cost, usability testing could lead to the development of highly usable forms. The study thus makes recommendations on the practical guidelines for the implementation of the group testing approach particularly in low-resource settings during mobile form design.

2009

Abstract Mobile interaction design introduces added challenges when compared with the usual design process for fixed technologies. In particular, it benefits greatly from the ability to take the design process out of the lab, creating, designing and evaluating applications within their natural usage context. However, this process requires new and deeply refined approaches to traditional techniques which are demanding and still avoided by designers.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

Prototyping is an essential part of the user-centered design process (UCD). Since the emergence of touch-based mobile devices in recent years, a broad range of efforts has been taken to adapt professional prototyping tools to the mobile context. However, none of the existing mobile prototyping solutions adapts sufficiently to the needs of multidisciplinary teams or considers the experience of the users' working environments explicitly. Our goal was to develop a mobile prototyping tool that supports the users in their tasks with special attention to the context of use. We especially considered the holistic experience relating all tasks of the human-centered design process. Our approach of requirements engineering focused on UX methods to get a deep insight not only on pragmatic features but also emotional demands (i.e. hedonic qualities). Therefore we tried to strengthen the hedonic qualities to support action mode usage for leveraging creative potentials. We'd like to reveal whether and to what extent a detailed look on UX can ensure the working progress efficiency and motivation of a multidisciplinary software engineering team practicing agile methods. We will illustrate this by presenting the development process of our mobile prototyping tool Prime, especially concerning new perspectives of a design process that focuses on hedonic parameters.

Abstract. In this paper we discuss the dynamic and non-optimal nature of mobile usage, and how this impacts on design and evaluation. We suggest that non-optimal usage conditions needs to be explicitly considered and that they can serve both as a design tool and as a motivation for designers/developers to create more accessible mobile solutions. We outline three design tool concepts: key scenarios (text and/or image and/or short video), contextual walkthrough where non-optimal condition situations are added to a heuristic evaluation ...