DUXU 2016: Design, User Experience, and Usability: Technological Contexts pp 14-23 | Cite as
Where-How-What Am I Feeling: User Context Logging in Automated Usability Tests for Mobile Software
Abstract
This work proposes the use of a system to implement user context and emotional feedback and logging in automated usability tests for mobile devices. Our proposal augments the traditional methods of software usability evaluation by monitoring users’ location, weather conditions, moving/stationary status, data connection availability and spontaneous facial expressions automatically. This aims to identify the moment of negative and positive events. Identifying those situations and systematically associating them to the context of interaction, assisted software creators to overcome design flaws and enhancing interfaces’ strengths.
The validation of our approach include post-test questionnaires with test subjects. The results indicate that the automated user-context logging can be a substantial supplement to mobile software usability tests.
Keywords
Usability Automation UXDX Mobile phones User researchReferences
- 1.Brajnik, G.: Automatic web usability evaluation: what needs to be done. In: Proceedings of Human Factors and the Web, 6th Conference, JuneGoogle Scholar
- 2.Harty, J.: Finding usability bugs with automated tests. Commun. ACM 54(2), 44–49 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 3.Witold, A.: Consolidating the ISO usability models. In: Presented at the 11th International Software Quality Management Conference and 8th Annual INSPIRE Conference (2003)Google Scholar
- 4.Rubin, J., Chisnell, D.: Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York, NY (2008)Google Scholar
- 5.Vukelja, L. et al., Are engineers condemned to design? A survey on software engineering and UI design in Switzerland. In: Presented at the 11th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2007)Google Scholar
- 6.Dumas, J.S., Redish, J.C.: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing: Intellect Books (1999)Google Scholar
- 7.Oztoprak, A., Erbug, C.: Field versus laboratory usability testing: a first comparison. Technical report, Department of Industrial Design - Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Architecture (2008)Google Scholar
- 8.Lettner, F., Holzmann, C.: Automated and unsupervised user interaction logging as basis for usability evaluation of mobile applications. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia, pp. 118–127. ACM (2012)Google Scholar
- 9.de Lera, E., Garreta-Domingo, M.: Ten emotion heuristics: guidelines for assessing the user’s affective dimension easily and cost-effectively. In: Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI… but not as we know it, vol. 2, pp. 163–166. British Computer Society (2007)Google Scholar
- 10.Spillers, F.: Emotion as a Cognitive Artifact and the Design Implications for Products that are Perceived as Pleasurable (2007). http://www.experiencedy-namics.com/pdfs/published_works/Spillers-EmotionDesign-Proceedingspdf. Accessed 18 Feb 2007
- 11.Madrigal, D., McClain, B.: Usability for mobile devices, September (2010). http://www.ux-matters.com/mt/archives/2010/09/
- 12.Kaikkonen, A., Kallio, T., Kekäläinen, A., Kankainen, A., Cankar, M.: Usability testing of mobile applications: a comparison between laboratory and field testing. J. Usability Stud. 1, 4–16 (2005)Google Scholar
- 13.Hertzum, M.: User testing in industry: a case study of laboratory, workshop, and field tests. In: Proceedings of the 5th ERCIM Workshop on “User Interfaces for All” (1999)Google Scholar
- 14.Kjeldskov, J., Skov, M.B.: Was it worth the hassle? Ten years of mobile HCI research discussions on lab and field evaluations. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. ACM (2014)Google Scholar
- 15.Feijó Filho, J., Prata, W., Valle, T.: Mobile software emotions logging: towards an automatic usability evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. ACM (2015)Google Scholar
- 16.Balagtas-Fernandez, F., Hussmann, H.: A methodology and framework to simplify usability analysis of mobile applications. In: Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (2009)Google Scholar
- 17.Staiano, J., Menendez, M., Battocchi, A., De Angeli, A., Sebe, N.: UX mate: from facial expressions to UX evaluation. In: Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference, pp. 741–750. ACM DIS (2012)Google Scholar
- 18.Zhang, D., Adipat, B.: Challenges, methodologies, and issues in the usability testing of mobile applications. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact. 18(3), 293–308 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 19.Picard, R.W., Daily, S.B.: Evaluating affective interactions: alternatives to asking what users feel. In: Presented at CHI 2005 Workshop Evaluating Affective Interfaces (Portland, OR, 2–7 April 2005). Anderson, R.E.: Social impacts of computing: codes of professional ethics. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 10(2), pp. 453–469 (1992)Google Scholar