Home // ICSEA 2015, The Tenth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances // View article

Evaluating the Usability of Mobile Instant Messaging Apps on iOS Devices

Authors:
Sergio Caro-Alvaro
Antonio Garcia-Cabot
Eva Garcia-Lopez
Luis de-Marcos
Jose-Javier Martinez-Herráiz

Keywords: Instant messaging; mobile usability; keystroke level modeling; mobile heuristic evaluation

Abstract:
Instant messaging apps are experiencing a significant upturn in recent years in mobile devices. This paper shows the results of applying a systematic evaluation of these applications on iOS platform that was performed to identify their main usability issues. As a result of this evaluation some guidelines for improving the usability of these applications are proposed, such as a carefully designing the interface or not exceeding more than eight (and preferably not more than six) interactions to perform the main tasks. The results and the guidelines proposed will help in the future to create more effective mobile applications for instant messaging.

Pages: 286 to 289

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: November 15, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-438-1

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from November 15, 2015 to November 20, 2015