Evaluating of Mobile User Interface: A Design Lenses Approach

Abstract

In the last few years, mobile devices have become the main type of device used to access the Internet in several countries. The software normally used, the personal computer, is gradually being replaced by applications on mobile devices. These applications could be considered as compact versions of software (even though they usually present added features), designed to minimize what is required from the user, and to work quickly and easily. For desktop-oriented software, evaluation processes are designed with the purpose of verifying if the applications are easy to use. However, in the context of mobile devices, there is a dearth of methods for the same purpose. For these reasons, the present work focuses on proposing an evaluation process focused on interfaces for mobile devices. In this way, interviews were performed to understand how evaluation processes are considered within the routines of professionals who deal with mobile devices. The proposed process has a set of associated evaluation lenses. To facilitate access to the process, an application was developed, and it is presented at the end of this paper. This work concludes that there are discussions about processes that help in the evaluation and improvement of interfaces, but they are still deficient, or their executions deprioritized. Accessibility is generally not considered primarily for financial reasons. Therefore, it is necessary to develop more research like this one, which seek to propose new methods that are flexible and useful in practical market contexts.