Leveraging Microsoft׳s mobile usability guidelines: Conceptualizing and developing scales for mobile application usability

The aim of this programme of research was to build upon prior work regarding the heuristic evaluation of mobile applications in two important areas. A mixed methods approach was taken to address the research questions using questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, document analysis and statistical analyses. The first contribution of this programme of research was to adapt traditional usability heuristics, so they could be used to more effectively evaluate the usability of mobile applications. The resulting set of mobile application usability heuristics uncovered the highest number of usability issues in absolute terms, as well as the most critical issues within a well-known travel mobile application when compared to two other sets of usability heuristics. In addition, the set of mobile application usability heuristics defined within this programme of research was ranked as the most useful set by participants knowledgeable in the field of human-computer interaction when compared to two other sets of usability heuristics. The second contribution of this programme of research was to extend the set of mobile application heuristics allowing human-computer interaction researchers and practitioners to more effectively consider the potential impact of context of use on the usability of mobile applications. This addressed a gap in the literature as few effective methods existed for this purpose. The protocol was deemed easy to use, easy to understand and easy to learn by participants knowledgeable in the field of human-computer interaction. The beneficiaries of this programme of research are human-computer interaction researchers and practitioners, as well as mobile application users.

To assess the impact of gender and orthodontic qualification length on the awareness, knowledge and usage of orthodontic diagnostic mobile applications, non-diagnostic mobile applications and social media platforms among orthodontic clinicians. Cross-sectional questionnaire-based study. The Republic of Croatia. A total of 92 orthodontic specialists, members of the Croatian Dental Chamber. This study was conducted using a questionnaire distributed via email to orthodontic clinicians between May and July 2022. In total, 92 respondents were divided into groups according to sex and median orthodontic qualification length: more recently qualified (MRQ) with ⩽12 years; and longer qualified (LQ) with >12 years. Nearly one-third of respondents did not have any prior knowledge of mobile applications used as an orthodontic diagnostic tool. MRQ respondents were more interested in using mobile apps as opposed to computer software for digital analysis (P < 0.05). This interest was in a negative correlation with orthodontic qualification length (P < 0.01) and was more prevalent among female respondents (P < 0.001). About one-third (32.6%) of respondents did not use non-diagnostic mobile applications and 44.6% did not use social media platforms. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the respondents did not promote their work through social media. Male respondents and LQ promoted their work more frequently than others (P < 0.05). The usage of other mobile applications was in a positive correlation with the knowledge and awareness of orthodontic mobile applications (P < 0.05). Orthodontic clinicians lacked knowledge, awareness and the usage of orthodontic diagnostic mobile applications according to sex and orthodontic qualification length. One-third used non-diagnostic mobile applications and less than half used social platforms in daily clinical work.

Since Depending on technological advances, development of&#x0D; social media and mobile applications today reshape communication, education and teaching system. The extent to which social media and mobile applications which are especially used by new generation youth frequently will be beneficial in student-teacher and student-student communication is becoming more and more important. This research is based on the opinions of students on the usage of social media and mobile applications in education which take considerable time of teachers and students, social networks and mobile applications were used with the purpose of communication in science and communication technologies for 12 weeks. Thirty-five teacher candidates attended the study. At the end of the application interviews were held with 20 students and according&#x0D; to the findings obtained, an effort was paid to determine the impact of social media and mobile applications in student-teacher and student-student communication. Discussions and recommendations on obtained findings were presented.

Peer-reviewed articles on the usage of mobile applications in the management of diabetes were reviewed. Studies using mobile device applications for diabetes interventions published between January 2007 and March 2013 were included in his review. Studies related to the developmental processes of the mobile applications were excluded. The characteristics of these studies and the outcomes of the methods used in the management of diabetes were gathered. We retrieved a total of 372 articles from ACM Digital library, PubMed and Proquest Medical Library. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 8 articles were eligible for further review. Most of the studies included in this review showed the effectiveness of mobile applications in diabetes management. Their major contribution comes from feedback functions of the systems that assist participants in the self-monitoring of their blood glucose and dietary intake. However, the majority of the studies showed the limited use of the mobile phone as a tool to input information into systems which would in turn convey a reminder message to the patient. In conclusion, with its features of portability and convenience, mobile application used in the management of diabetes has the potential to improve glycaemic control, resulting in significant clinical and financial benefits. DOI : http://10.17576/JSKM-2016-1402-01

&lt;p class="0abstract"&gt;In order that mobile applications can be employed successfully in education, the opinions of teachers for using these applications must be identified and improved. For these reasons, the purpose of this study is to identify the opinions of teacher candidates, who are teachers of the future, on the usage of mobile applications in the process of multimedia project development. This study which was conducted with the purpose of identifying the opinions of teacher candidates on usage of mobile applications in education as means of communication employed qualitative method. Results is that using mobile applications in multimedia project development process attracted the attention of students and ensured effective communication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="0abstract"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;

“Good health and well-being” constitutes one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. To reach this goal, information systems such as mobile fitness applications can play a substantial role in changing behaviors towards a more healthy lifestyle. For such a change, the continued usage of mobile fitness applications is a necessary prerequisite, exceeding merely installing and short-term usage of such apps. While research on the initial adoption is salient, considering factors that enable or harm the long-term usage of these systems is relatively rare and dispersed. Therefore, we aim to identify and structure antecedents and outcomes of continued usage of mobile fitness applications using a comprehensive systematic literature review. We searched six databases for relevant articles, identifying a total of 54 factors related to mobile fitness applications’ continued usage and inductively systematized them. Our study systematically reviews the antecedents and outcomes of mobile fitness applications’ continued usage, offering both theoretical insights and practical recommendations. Theoretically, we integrate insights from behavioral technology adoption models, motivation theories, and social influence perspectives to develop a holistic framework for continued mobile fitness applications’ usage. Practically, we provide actionable strategies for app developers, public health professionals, and policymakers to enhance user retention, optimize mobile fitness applications’ design, and promote long-term digital health interventions. By bridging theoretical perspectives with real-world applications, our study underscores the role of mobile fitness applications in shaping sustainable health behaviors and advancing digital health solutions.

The accelerated development of new technology, particularly on mobile application has increased teacher’s responsibility as a learning facilitator. Since technology is improving, many applications keep on coming into the market to fulfill user demands. Mobile learning application is very useful in enriching the mobile learning experience of children. However, some applications fail to assist and increase children knowledge on the subject they studied. Moreover, some children are not interested in mobile applications due to issues such as poor interfaces. In this paper, some previous studies on quality attributes used to evaluate mobile learning applications were reviewed. A systematic literature review approach was employed to search previous papers and studies on usability quality attributes, particularly for mobile learning applications. The search strategy identified numerous studies on usability for mobile learning applications for children. The result showed that the top four usability quality attributes are efficiency, effectiveness; learnability and user satisfaction. The studies reviewed showed that usability evaluations were conducted during implementation phase only, and evaluation is often built as a description of the case study. This study explored the current literatures on the subject matter and stimulates further studies that will lead to improved usability and design of mobile learning applications for children.

The aim of this study is to adapt the mobile application usability scale to the Turkish culture and test its nomological network within a structural measuring model. The model is based on the technology acceptance model. Considering the relationships between usability perceptions, continued intention to use, brand loyalty and actual use of mobile applications of the users, these four variables were included in the model. The study was conducted on 476 participants. Translation of the scales, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability tests were conducted to test the validity and reliability of the scales. The original construct of the three scales validated by confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were high or at least acceptable for all constructs. Fit indexes of the model indicated that the model remains within the acceptable limits. Relationships between usability, continued intention to use, brand loyalty and actual use were validated with the sample data.

Using digital ethnography to examine the daily mobile (micro)blogging (moblogging) practices of local residents as they confronted a wave of inbound shopping tourists in pre-Covid-19 pandemic Hong Kong, this article explores how the latest mode of mundane citizenship emerges from the communicative mobility of urban dwellers equipped with mobile phones and social media applications (apps). Recent research on the role of mobile devices and social media apps in citizen participation has focused on more visible forms of civic–political events, such as protests and voting, and tended to neglect the effects of mobile communication performed during banal travel and quotidian activities. This article offers an alternative reading of the relevance of mobile social media (MSM) in contemporary public lives by examining how they open up new temporalities and spatialities for counter-public engagement in the contexts of mundane urban mobility. The findings demonstrate various moblogging practices that entail modalities of counter-public engagement that traverse the personal, proto-political, and communal, and reveal how local residents used these modalities to articulate alternative public agendas, connect acts of consumer activism, and perform communal belonging vis-à-vis inbound shopping tourism amid their daily routines and modest journeys. Focusing on mobile socialities enabled by smartphones and networking apps, this article explicates how contemporary moblogging can, on the one hand, extend people's capacity to engage in citizen talk and connective action, while on the other hand, allow them to flexibly connect and contribute personal photobiographies and narratives to counter-public communities. By unpacking the novel pathways to citizen participation, it offers insights into new ways in which everyday mobile communication can be transformed into public involvement, albeit often in agonistic and emotional forms, and the role of MSM in this process.

This research aimed to establish a dialogue between the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) developed by Venkatesh, Thong and Xu (2012) and “Eu material” presented by Bagozzi, Ruvio e Xie (2020), proposing a configuration of structural model that suggests factors that influence the explanation of the intention to use and behavior of use of users of mobile applications of urban transport in the context of sharing economy. The research approach methodology was quantitative with the performance of statistical tests by Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The sample included 485 respondents from educational institutions in the metropolitan region of São Paulo that use urban transport applications. The proposed structural model presented satisfactory indices, representing that the relationship between the “material I” and “Behavioral Intention” is significant and negative, indicating that the higher the individual’s “material I” level, the lower the User’s Behavioral Intention regarding the individual’s behavior. use of urban mobility applications. The theoretical model presented high explanatory power of the main endogenous constructs – Behavioral Intent (adjusted R2 0.733) and Use Behavior (adjusted R2 0.518) constructs. Finally, the main theoretical contribution of the work was the integration of theories in a theoretical model that allowed to evaluate the influence of the Material Self (materialism) on the Behavioral Intent of users of mobile urban transport applications

This theoretical essay builds on existing literature to draw out the consequences of dehumanizing and disseminating autism discourses within the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Focusing mainly on narratives in HCI that frame autistic people as or like machines, we explore how dominant constructions of autism in HCI work to normalize the field’s complicity in violent autism intervention paradigms, despite HCI researchers’ well-meaning intentions. We work towards developing crip-cyborgs as an alternative framework for understanding autistic people (as opposed to computers or robots) and suggest crip technoscience as a framework for research based on this alternative understanding. In doing so, we hope to enroll misguided but well-intentioned researchers in dismantling anti-autistic ableism, both in and beyond HCI.

This work open up a conversation about the opportunities that Science Fiction offers to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Design research. In doing so, first, it briefly challenges the term Design Fiction, an emerging concept with increasing popularity in HCI and Design research. Design Fictions are either, manifest design propositions, or intangible, imagined future interfaces, speculative interactions and would-be environments. Design Fictions as useful as they are, however, are not necessarily something new nor innovative in themselves. Speculative design and evaluation methods all have been staple methods of Computer Science research since the establishment of HCI as a discrete field sometime in the 1980s. Second, the paper proceeds to propose that the domain of Science Fiction could not only be useful, but rightly considered, as a legitimate field of creative inquire in HCI and Design education. By reframing the notion of Science Fiction from an ‘anecdotal gimmick’ toward an ‘area of study’ a novel, wide-ranging space for design inspiration, ingenuity and creativity opens up for conceptual exploration. We believe that such an elevation of Science Fiction as a serious research topic has strong potential to inform the Computer Science, HCI and Design research application and education endeavours of the future.KeywordsComputer science research and educationDesign FictionSpeculative future studiesPopular culture in scienceScience Fiction

In the area of broadband wireless Internet, mobile applications have already replaced their desktop equivalents and are recognized as valuable tools for any size of businesses and for private use. With the emergence of millions of apps, the quality of their interaction with the user remains an open question for software vendors. While female and male requirements and preferences are not always similar, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have examined the impact of gender on the perceived usability of mobile applications. Therefore, the goal of this study is to assess their usability from the perspective of female and male users, and to evaluate the differences between them. In our study, based on an experimental setup with a group of 40 users (16 females and 24 males), with regard to three usability attributes, namely efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected, respectively via pre- and post-testing questionnaires and during application testing sessions, combined with the think aloud protocol. To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics were extracted from the video data and used to calculate the inferential statistics. With a significance level (alpha) of 5%, our findings show that between the groups of females and males, there were no statistically significant differences in the performance accuracy, average completion time, and perceived satisfaction, since all <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</i> values are greater than the assumed alpha. Hence, one can conclude that no effect of gender was observed with regard to the usability of the Gmail application. Overall, the empirical results contribute to the ongoing research on mobile application usability by providing evidence-based insights that we believe may be valuable for both theory and practice.

Spatial analysis of the use of mobile phone applications among government pensioners in Perlis is the focus of this study. The main objective is to study the extent of the skill level of using mobile phone applications among government pensioners in Perlis, based on the respective parliamentary constituencies of Padang Besar, Kangar and Arau. Data for this study was collected through a well-designed questionnaire that was distributed to respondents at the government pensioners agency in Perlis. By processing the acquired data, a spatial distribution map was created, depicting the geographical spread of the government pensioners respondent in Perlis. This map provides valuable insight into the varying levels of mobile phone app usage among government pensioners in each parliament. Through this analysis, this study shows government pensioners in the Kangar Parliament have a very good level of usage for mobile phone application that is 60% compared to the Arau and Padang Besar Parliaments. The results from the questionnaire analysis reveal five (5) sections that are demographic, awareness on mobile phone application usage, the opinion of government pensioners about mobile phone applications, self-evaluation of government pensioners in the level of mobile phone application usage, and recommendations. This information is useful to plan suitable community activities with government pensioners in order to upgrade their ability with the current technologies on mobile phone application usage.

The 'MySuara' app is a personalised augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) mobile application designed for Malaysian special education classrooms, offering multilingual support and a unique dual-screen modelling feature to enhance teacher-student communication. Besides, it allows the customisation of symbol sets to meet individual student needs, providing a personalised solution for teachers and caregivers. This study aims to assess the usability of the 'MySuara' mobile app using a developed questionnaire, as usability is quantifiable and crucial for user satisfaction. Conducting such evaluations can unveil flaws in the system and reveal user demands, which is vital for successful app development. Usability testing is essential during development to ensure high user satisfaction and successful app usage. However, limited usability models exist for assessing mobile application features. Therefore, 'MySuara' was evaluated using a questionnaire developed based on the Mobile Learning Application Usability model and the People at the Centre of Mobile Application Development (PACMAD) model. Two questionnaires adapted from Parsazadeh et al. (2018) and Marcial et al. (2018), were combined to create the augmentative and alternative communication usability questionnaire (AACUQ) for 'MySuara' app. The PACMAD was deemed the most suitable for evaluating 'MySuara' due to its tailored focus on mobile application usability, encompassing attributes identified as crucial factors impacting usability. The AACUQ usability questionnaire comprised eight attributes: effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, learnability, memorability, error handling, cognitive load, and timeliness. Permissions were secured from the authors before integrating the questionnaires, with adjustments made by removing unsuitable items and modifying others. The AACUQ, comprising 40 items on a five-point Likert scale, was administered via Google Forms, including a consent form, demographic section, and questionnaire for participant response. Fourteen participants, 12 special education teachers and two speech therapists, voluntarily participated in the survey. Data collection occurred after participants tested the 'MySuara' app. Overall, participants expressed satisfaction with the app, with mean values for each attribute above average. The study discusses limitations and implications, concluding 'MySuara' is suitable for its intended purpose.