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Figure 2. Mobile usability heuristics
Figure 3. Severity ranking scale (SRS)
Procedure
their level of education/academic status,
relevant experience in both HCI and mo-
bile computing, experience in using both
a PDA and Nielsen's heuristic evaluation
method; the collected demographic data
can be seen in Figure 4. Most of the partici-
pants have a high level of education and an
average knowledge of HCI and mobile de-
vices. Six participants consider themselves
almost knowledgeable about heuristic
evaluation, while two give themselves an
average rating. A training session was con-
ducted with each evaluator to ensure that
they fully understood the usability heuris-
tics, and especially the mobile heuristics,
which the participants were not familiar
with; this involved the facilitator stepping
through each usability heuristic and invit-
ing the evaluators to ask questions in order
to clarify the meaning of each heuristic and
their understanding of the overall process.
•
Evaluation session:
The usability evalua-
tors performed the usability evaluation on
The 8 usability experts were randomly split into
two groups, each assigned to one of the foregoing
two experimental conditions (that is a between-
subjects design). They all had previous expertise
in the HCI evaluation field and were familiar with
both the application of traditional HE methods
and the use of mobile applications. Nevertheless,
they were all given some brief instruction on the
technique before starting the evaluation. The fol-
lowing protocol was used for both experimental
conditions:
•
Pre-evaluation session:
This entailed first
welcoming and greeting each evaluator.
After that the goals of the study, the testing
procedures, and the confidentiality issues
were explained in detail. Scripts were pre-
pared in advance and used for each usabil-
ity evaluator to ensure consistency across
experts and conditions. In a demographics
questionnaire experts were asked about
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