rather answering questions start use of digital
signatures assigned to individuals”
“User friendly app which would not be difficult to
navigate even when network speed is not great”
“Taking least and only required inputs.. For any
operation on mobile banking app..Building trust in
users to adopt mobile banking/marketing providing
security pin generator token/device..even to
farmers..and rest of the banking should be carried
out with dtmf/sms based inputs..as these are the
easiest to use.. any person can easily adopt
it..Separate/dedicated communication channels via
service providers should be opened with highest
security measures”
Some common comments from Google play
store were:
“Screen flickering and UI goes blank sometime”
“Application tends to take much more time then
compared to other competitive bank, on 2G it tends
to hang does not show proper error messages.”
“Screen with poor UI and color combinations. Less
user friendly.”
From the survey and user comments analysis,
there was a clear correlation perceived by the users
between usability issues and reliability. For
example, if the app had difficult activation process,
customers lost interest in the app and stated that the
mobile banking app was not reliable. On the
contrary some other mobile banking apps had a
strong positive sentiment and customers were
satisfied with the app. The survey results concur
with our supposition that better usability leads to
better adoption and in turn better revenues for the
banks.
3 USABILITY MEASUREMENT
Usability is captured as a set of non-functional
requirements in software engineering practices. The
user interface designer develops wireframes and
mock-ups based on the requirements and available
organization standards. In our interaction with the
Indian banks’ mobile banking teams, werealized that
most of them do not have specific personnel playing
the role of user interface designers. Business Analyst
or technology teams develop mock-ups or screen
designs. In some cases, the interfaces were
developed directly without business team/user
involvement.
To understand the usability requirements and
factors to measure usability, some of the widely
adopted mobile banking apps of major banks (Wells
Fargo, Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Citi Bank,
and JP Morgan Chase Bank) and Mobile Wallets
(Square, Starbucks, PayPal, mPay, etc.) were
installed and the usability factors were studied.
As there are no BIS guidelines or assessment
factorson usability of mobile applications,the
Human Computer Interface and the User experience
guidelines for mobile devices available from Apple
for iOS(iOS Human Interface Guidelines,2014),
Google for Android (Mobile App Design from
Android,2014) and Microsoft for Windows
Mobile(Usability Guidelines,2014)were
studied.Majority of banking apps run on these
platforms, hence it covered the entire gamut of
mobile banking apps. Also, the usability models
suggested by Nielsen and Norman group (Mobile
website and application usability) and, People at the
Centre of Mobile Application Development
(PACMAD) model (Harrison, R Flood and Duce
D,2013; Bostr F, 2008 and Seongil L, 2008)were
studied. In addition, the five human computer
interface laws were analysed:(1) Miller's law of
STM (short term memory)(Miller, 1965), (2) Fitts'
Law(Fitts. P, 1954), (3) Hick Hyman Law(Rosati L,
2013), (4) Power law of practice(Newell A and
Rosenbloom P S, 1993), and (5) Zipf law(Apitz, G.,
Guimbretière, F. and Zhai, S.,2008). The main
reason to study these laws was to get a grasp of the
human aspects of remembrance, time taken to make
a decision based on the available choices and user
expectations on keeping most frequently used as the
first option as they have an impact on user
perception on usability.
The ISO 9241 manual on “Ergonomics of
Human System Interaction – Guidance on World
Wide User Interfaces”(Ergonomics of Human
System Interaction)was studied. However, the
guidelines proposed were generic to web
applications rather than mobile apps interfaces.
Like most other non-functional requirements,
measuring usability is challenging. In our work,
usability is measured based on the following factors:
(1) Time taken to complete task. Intuitively this
can be a measure as the number of clicks.
(2) User interface display parameters. This refers to
the font, colours, etc.
(3) Error handling. This focuses on the error
messages and the techniques to handle them.
The authors are associated with banking technology
arm of RBI and have a working relationship with
several mobile banking channel managers and
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