Automated Usability Testing for Mobile Applications

Wolfgang Kluth, Karl-Heinz Krempels, Christian Samsel

2014

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of an automated usability evaluation method for iOS applications. In contrast to common usability testing methods, it is not explicitly necessary to involve an expert or subjects. These circumstances reduce costs, time and personnel expenditures. Professionals are replaced by the automation tool while test participants are exchanged with consumers of the launched application. Interactions of users are captured via a fully automated capturing framework which creates a record of user interactions for each session and sends them to a central server. A usability problem is defined as a sequence of interactions and pattern recognition specified by interaction design patterns is applied to find these problems. Nevertheless, it falls back to the user input for accurate results. Similar to the problem, the solution of the problem is based on the HCI design pattern. An evaluation shows the functionality of our approach compared to a traditional usability evaluation method.

References

  1. Ahmad, R., Li, Z., and Azam, F. (2006). Measuring navigational burden. In Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications, 2006. Fourth International Conference on, pages 307-314.
  2. Albraheem, L. and Alnuem, M. (2012). Automated Usability Testing : A Literature Review and an Evaluation.
  3. Apple (2013). iOS Developer Library: UIGestureRecognizer Class Reference.
  4. Au, F., Baker, S., Warren, I., and Dobbie, G. (2008). Automated Usability Testing Framework. volume 76, pages 55-64.
  5. Baharuddin, R., Singh, D., and Razali, R. (2013). Usability Dimensions for Mobile Applications-A Review. Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 5(6):2225-2231.
  6. Baker, S. and Au, F. (2008). Automated Usability Testing Using HUI Analyzer. pages 579-588.
  7. Balagtas-Fernandez, F. and Hussmann, H. (2009). A Methodology and Framework to Simplify Usability Analysis of Mobile Applications. pages 520-524. IEEE.
  8. Borchers, J. O. (2000). A pattern approach to interaction design. pages 369-378.
  9. 16Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie
  10. Fitts, P. M. (1992). The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 121(3):262-9.
  11. Henze, N. and Boll, S. (2011). It Does Not Fitts My Data! Analysing Large Amounts of Mobile Touch Data Niels. INTERACT 2011, Part IV, pages 564-567.
  12. Ivory, M. and Hearst, M. (2001). The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user interfaces. ACM Computing Surveys, 33(4):470-516.
  13. Keenan, S. L., Hartson, H. R., Kafura, D. G., and Schulman, R. S. (1999). The Usability Problem Taxonomy: A Framework for Classification and Analysis. Empirical Software Engineering, 4:71-104.
  14. Lettner, F. and Holzmann, C. (2012a). Sensing mobile phone interaction in the field. In Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PERCOM Workshops), 2012 IEEE International Conference on, pages 877-882.
  15. Lettner, F. and Holzmann, C. (2012b). Usability evaluation framework: Automated interface analysis for android applications. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory - Volume Part II, EUROCAST'11, pages 560-567, Berlin, Heidelberg. Springer-Verlag.
  16. Matero, J. and Colley, A. (2012). Identifying unintentional touches on handheld touch screen devices. pages 506- 509.
  17. Nielsen, J. (1995). Severity Ratings for Usability Problems.
  18. Schmidt, A. (2000). Implicit human computer interaction through context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 4(2-3):191-199.
  19. Weiss, D. and Zduniak, M. (2007). Automated integration tests for mobile applications in java 2 micro edition. pages 478-487.
  20. Zhang, D. and Adipat, B. (2005). Challenges, Methodologies, and Issues in the Usability Testing of Mobile Applications. International Journal of HumanComputer, pages 293-308.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Kluth W., Krempels K. and Samsel C. (2014). Automated Usability Testing for Mobile Applications . In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-758-024-6, pages 149-156. DOI: 10.5220/0004985101490156


in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist14,
author={Wolfgang Kluth and Karl-Heinz Krempels and Christian Samsel},
title={Automated Usability Testing for Mobile Applications},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST,},
year={2014},
pages={149-156},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004985101490156},
isbn={978-989-758-024-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST,
TI - Automated Usability Testing for Mobile Applications
SN - 978-989-758-024-6
AU - Kluth W.
AU - Krempels K.
AU - Samsel C.
PY - 2014
SP - 149
EP - 156
DO - 10.5220/0004985101490156