Evaluating usability aspects of a school photo mobile application
2015 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Context. The market for mobile applications is expanding rapidly. Companies that have web-based applications are required to supply their costumerswith mobile applications to not fall behind and lose their costumers. Portinga web-based application to a mobile platform is not only about decreasing thesize of the web-pages’ content. To succeed in porting a web-based applicationto a mobile platform the usability of the application must remain the sameand possibly be improved, otherwise the consequence is that users becomefrustrated and leave the mobile application.
Objectives. The objectives of this thesis is to investigate how to structureand display the features of a school photo web-based application to a mobileapplication, and keep the usability.
Methods. A literature study has been done to find guidelines for designingmobile applications. Three mobile application prototypes have been devel-oped. The prototypes have been tested with usability tests in a laboratoryexperiment to find usability problems if such exists, and to identify the mostusable alternative. The usability tests have been done with the target groupof the mobile application.
Results. The most usable prototype was identified. Also, a list of recommen-dations are compiled from the experiment (such as, provide help text underthe icons to clarify the content of the icon), and specific improvements thatcan be done to the most usable prototype is also compiled.
Conclusions. As a conclusion, the used guidelines and usability heuristicssupported the design of the prototypes and helped to get user-friendly inter-faces. Prototype III obtained the best results in the usability tests. The resultsalso showed that the Prototype III can be further improved. It has also beenfound that related applications such as Instagram, can be helpful in order toget usable and user-friendly interfaces.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. , p. 69
Keywords [en]
Usability testing, usability heuristics, mobile application, online-prototyping
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-3371OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-3371DiVA, id: diva2:831157
External cooperation
Viron Media AB
Subject / course
DV2524 Degree Project in Computer Science for Engineers
Educational program
DVACI Master of Science in Computer and Electrical Engineering
Supervisors
Examiners
2015-08-032015-06-302018-01-11Bibliographically approved