Appropriating Heuristic Evaluation for Mobile Computing - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 27

Toward a Set of Heuristics • Interaction with application: this col-

lects classes of problems connected to
traditional screen design and information
architecture.
• Cognitive issues: here we characterize us-
ability problems stemming from an over-
load of cognitive resources or a mismatch
between a cognitive model and reality.
While this aspect has always been taken
into account in traditional studies, in mo-
bile settings it becomes more evident and
presents new challenges.
• Personalization: standard heuristics tend
to overlook problems connected to person-
alization or adaptation. While in standard
settings this issue can be considered minor
with respect to others, with mobile devices
this aspect can really be critical.
• Social issues: mobile devices and applica-
tions are used in a wide spectrum of envi-
ronments and social conditions: private or
public, alone or in groups, etc. This means
that the social impact of adopted design
solutions cannot be underestimated. Issues
like privacy, security, user image, and so-
cial conventions thus become of great
importance.
• Context: similarly to social issues, it is
necessary to take into account how the en-
vironment can affect interaction. Not only
do social conventions and relationships
with people matter, but also how potential
physical environment features affect the
design of an interface.

The brainstorming activity described in the previ-
ous section was continued and further articulated
in a series of new individual or collaborative tasks
aimed at developing a set of heuristics for mobile
computing evaluations. By capitalizing on the
outcome of our previous analysis of mobile us-
ability issues, we decided to rely on the following
developmental process to come up with a new set
of heuristics, better suited to be applied to mobile
evaluation settings.

Phase 1
Each of the 3 usability researchers was provided
with a table reporting Nielsen's traditional heu-
ristics (Nielsen, 1994b) together with their cor-
responding definitions. Each researcher worked
individually at assessing: which of Nielsen's heu-
ristics were considered irrelevant for mobile set-
tings; which of Nielsen's heuristics were relevant,
but needed some revision or modification; and
which additional heuristics needed to be included
in the original set to cover relevant aspects of
mobile applications. To better steer our individual
relevance judgment of the heuristics, we thought it
useful to define a guiding principle to be adopted
and shared during the assessment work: this was
a concise answer to the question: “What are the
primary goals of mobile applications?”, which we
expressed as follows: “To enable a user-friendly
navigation of relevant information or features in
mobile conditions of use”. The assessment and
brainstorming activity performed in this phase
was also informed by the consolidated version of
the mobile usability issues that had been previ-
ously realized (see section entitled Methodology
for Realizing Mobile Issues ).

Methodology for Realizing
Mobile Heuristics

This section discusses our research toward devel-
oping a set of mobile usability heuristics and also
our efforts toward assessing the proposed mobile
usability heuristics.

Phase 2
Each of the usability researchers compared her/
his own table of proposed heuristics with that of
another researcher, to produce a new consolidated
table. This activity was meant to be carried out