Rethinking Usability Assessment: Integrating UX and Information Architecture

Jo Santos, Márcia Lima, Tayana Conte

2025

Abstract

Evaluating software usability in the early stages of development is important, thus avoiding costs associated with future changes and dissatisfied users. Current usability inspection techniques may be limited in scope as they do not embrace concepts such as User Experience (UX) and Information Architecture (IA). This paper presents a new set of heuristics based on Garrett’s elements of UX to be used in usability inspections, aiming to create systems that prioritize UX and IA aspects as an alternative to existing heuristic sets. The set was developed based on Garrett’s planes of UX, resulting in the creation of 14 heuristics organized according to each UX plane. We conducted an empirical study to analyze the technique’s feasibility. The results indicate that the new heuristics set can detect a reasonable amount of defects within an appropriate time frame. Additionally, we received feedback on the heuristics themselves, allowing for slight modifications. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing future directions for the new heuristics set.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Santos J., Lima M. and Conte T. (2025). Rethinking Usability Assessment: Integrating UX and Information Architecture. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS; ISBN 978-989-758-749-8, SciTePress, pages 589-596. DOI: 10.5220/0013363900003929

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis25,
author={Jo Santos and Márcia Lima and Tayana Conte},
title={Rethinking Usability Assessment: Integrating UX and Information Architecture},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS},
year={2025},
pages={589-596},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013363900003929},
isbn={978-989-758-749-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS
TI - Rethinking Usability Assessment: Integrating UX and Information Architecture
SN - 978-989-758-749-8
AU - Santos J.
AU - Lima M.
AU - Conte T.
PY - 2025
SP - 589
EP - 596
DO - 10.5220/0013363900003929
PB - SciTePress